“I’d like to give something,” she said. “But I’m not allowed. Everything is to be sold and paid for now; and all the things you mention now, Wragby and Shipley sells them to the people, at a good profit. Everything is sold. You don’t give one heartbeat of real sympathy. And besides, who has taken away from the people their natural life and manhood, and given them this industrial horror? Who has done that?”

“And what must I do?” he asked, green. “Ask them to come and pillage me?”

“Why is Tevershall so ugly, so hideous? Why are their lives so hopeless?”

“They built their own Tevershall, that’s part of their display of freedom. They built themselves their pretty Tevershall, and they live their own pretty lives. I can’t live their lives for them. Every beetle must live its own life.”

“But you make them work for you. They live the life of your coal mine.”