“Yes.”

“You’re a profiteer, G.J.”

“I’m not.  Long since I decided I must give away all my extra profits.”

“Ever go and look at your factory?”

“No.”

“Any nice young girls working there?”

“I don’t know.”

“If there are, are they decently treated?”

“Don’t know that, either.”

“Why don’t you go and see?”

“It’s no business of mine.”

“Yes, it is.  Aren’t you making yourself glorious as a philanthropist out of the thing?”

“I tell you it’s no business of mine,” he insisted evenly.  “I couldn’t do anything if I went.  I’ve no status.”

“Rotten system.”

“Possibly.  But systems can’t be altered like that.  Systems alter themselves, and they aren’t in a hurry about it.  This system isn’t new, though it’s new to you.”

“You people in London don’t know what work is.”

“And what about your Clyde strikes?” G.J. retorted.

“Well, all that’s settled now,” said Concepcion rather uneasily, like a champion who foresees a fight but lacks confidence.

“Yes, but—­” G.J. suddenly altered his tone to the persuasive:  “You must know all about those strikes.  What was the real cause?  We don’t understand them here.”

“If you really want to know—­nerves,” she said earnestly and triumphantly.

“Nerves?”

“Overwork.  No rest.  No change.  Everlasting punishment.  The one incomprehensible thing to me is that the whole of Glasgow didn’t go on strike and stay out for ever.”

“There’s just as much overwork in London as there is on the Clyde.”

“There’s a lot more talking—­Parliament, Cabinet, Committees.  You should hear what they say about it in Glasgow.”

“Con,” he said kindly, “you don’t suspect it, but you’re childish.  It’s the job of one part of London to talk.  If that part of London didn’t talk your tribes on the Clyde couldn’t work, because they wouldn’t know what to do, nor how to do it.  Talking has to come before working, and let me tell you it’s more difficult, and it’s more killing, because it’s more responsible.  Excuse this common sense made easy for beginners, but you brought it on yourself.”

She frowned.  “And what do you do?  Do you talk or work?” She smiled.

“I’ll tell you this!” said he, smiling candidly and benevolently.  “It took me a dickens of a time really to put myself into anything that meant steady effort.  I’d lost the habit.  Natural enough, and I’m not going into sackcloth about it.  However, I’m improving.  I’m going to take on the secretaryship of the Lechford Committee.  Some of ’em mayn’t want me, but they’ll have to have me.  And when they’ve got me they’ll have to look out.  All of them, including Queen and her mother.”

“Will it take the whole of your time?”

“Yes.  I’m doing three days a week now.”

“I suppose you think you’ve beaten me.”