“Who’s shirking their responsibility now!” he said. “Who is trying to get away now from the responsibility of their own boss-ship, as you call it?”

“But I don’t want any boss-ship,” she protested.

“Ah! But that is funk. You’ve got it: fated to it. And you should live up to it. Who has given the colliers all they have that’s worth having: all their political liberty, and their education, such as it is, their sanitation, their health conditions, their books, their music, everything. Who has given it them? Have colliers given it to colliers? No! All the Wragbys and Shipleys in England have given their part, and must go on giving. There’s your responsibility.”

Connie listened, and flushed very red.

“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.”

“Not at all. Every beetle finds its own food. Not one man is forced to work for me.”