Too dearly bought — Story, Setting & Ideas

THE procession was coming down Pleasant Lane!

A great number of noisy little boys came trooping on ahead, with shrill cries, to announce this important fact. Hardly one among them understood exactly what the procession was about; but flags and banners are the delight of a boy's heart. Not seldom this particular form of affection for coloured bunting lasts on into manhood.

The wives and mothers, who turned out of their doorways to enjoy the sight, were, however, more learned than their little boys as to the cause of the stir. And everybody was aware that Peter Pope was to be at its head.

Peter Pope, a smooth-tongued and comfortably-dressed individual, had been very busy lately in the town. Most of his business had been in the way of talk; but what of that? There was a committee, of course, behind him, which did a good deal of work while Pope did the talk. He had been sent down, as a delegate from London, for the express purpose of teaching the inhabitants of the town; and teaching commonly means a certain amount of talk. Peter Pope had come to teach the men of the town to appreciate their degraded and enslaved condition. With this object in view he had talked vigorously for many weeks; and the men were becoming fast convinced of the truth of his words. They had not dreamt before what a melancholy thing it was to be a British working-man; but now their eyes were opened.

If you want to convince the British Public about anything,—especially that part of the British Public which reads very few books, and knows very little of history, and never goes out of England, just remember this! There is not the least need that you should be clever or learned yourself, or even powerful in speech. You only have to go on saying the same thing over and over and over again, with dogged pertinacity; and in time you are sure to be believed. The British Public is wonderfully easy of belief, and will swallow anything,—if only you give it time! Peter Pope had done this. He had talked on, with a resolute and dogged pertinacity; he had given his hearers plenty of time; and now he was rewarded by seeing the biggest boluses he could offer, meekly gulped down.

It was a dingy and smoky town enough to which he had come; one of the crowded manufacturing towns, of which England owns so many. Not a clean or pretty town, but a prosperous one hitherto, with a fair abundance of work for willing toilers. Those who were unwilling to toil did badly there as elsewhere; and these were the men who first swallowed Peter Pope's bait.

Pleasant Lane was not the least narrow and dingy of many narrow dingy streets. The houses on either side were small, and for the most part not over clean. One little home near the centre formed a marked exception as to this last point; boasting dainty muslin blinds, windows filled with plants, and a spotless front doorstep.

On that step stood Sarah Holdfast, in her clean print gown, watching like others for the coming procession. Not that she had the least idea of seeing her husband figure in it. She was only dandling her baby, and lifting it up to be amused with the stir.

Martha Stevens, a young and pretty woman in the next doorway, had no such security about her husband. Roger Stevens was morally sure to be in the thick of whatever might be stirring,—whether it were good or bad. He was a well-meaning man, and not usually unsteady; but, like a good many of his companions, he was easily led, always ready to believe what he was told, and ever prepared to follow the crowd. As the stream of public opinion—the public opinion of the little world around himself—happened just then to run in the direction of a grand procession, Martha had not a shadow of doubt that her husband would find his place somewhere in the said procession.

"What's it all about, mother?" asked Robert, a rosy child of nine.

"It's the men, Bobbie," she said. "They're having a procession."

"What for?" asked Bobbie.

"They want something that the masters won't give 'em. They want higher wages and shorter hours."

"But what's the 'cession for?" persisted Bobbie.

"I'll tell you what it's for," volunteered a slovenly woman in the left-hand doorway, tossing a ragged infant in her arms. "It's to show that they're Men, and they're going to have their Rights! Time enough too! Working-men ain't a-going to be trampled on no longer, nor their wives neither. We won't put up with no more tyranny nor nonsense."