bad management, indiscreet purchases of licences at inflated prices! In
the excellent old days a brewery would stand an indefinite amount of bad
management! Times were changed. The British workman, caught in a wave of
temperance, could no longer be relied upon to drink! It was the crown of
his sins against society. Trade unions were nothing to this latest
caprice of his, which spread desolation in a thousand genteel homes.
Alice wondered what her father would have said, had he lived. On the
whole, she was glad that he did not happen to be alive. The shock to him
would have been too rude. The floor seemed to be giving way under Alice,
melting into a sort of bog that would swallow up her and her husband.
For years, without any precise information, but merely by instinct, she
had felt that England, beneath the surface, was not quite the island it
had been--and here was the awful proof.

She gazed at her husband, as a wife ought to gaze at her husband in a
crisis. His thoughts were much vaguer than hers, his thoughts about
money being always extremely vague.

"Suppose you went up to the City and saw Mr. What's-his-name?" she
suggested, meaning the signatory of the letter.

"_Me_!"

It was a cry of the soul aghast, a cry drawn out of him sharply, by a
most genuine cruel alarm. Him to go up to the City to interview a
solicitor! Why, the poor dear woman must be demented! He could not have
done it for a million pounds. The thought of it made him sick, raising
the whole of his lunch to his throat, as by some sinister magic.

She saw and translated the look on his face. It was a look of horror.