Connie walked on in silence a few paces. Then she said, obstinately:

“It sounds like saying an egg may go as addled as it likes, so long as it keeps its shell on whole. But addled eggs do break of themselves.”

“I don’t think people are eggs,” he said. “Not even angels’ eggs, my dear little evangelist.”

He was in rather high feather this bright morning. The larks were trilling away over the park, the distant pit in the hollow was fuming silent steam. It was almost like old days, before the war. Connie didn’t really want to argue. But then she did not really want to go to the wood with Clifford either. So she walked beside his chair in a certain obstinacy of spirit.

“No,” he said. “There will be no more strikes, if the thing is properly managed.”

“Why not?”

“Because strikes will be made as good as impossible.”