`Oh!' said Mrs Bolton, `you hear a few loud-mouthed ones. But they're
mostly women who've got into debt. The men take no notice. I don't believe
you'll ever turn our Tevershall men into reds. They're too decent for that.
But the young ones blether sometimes. Not that they care for it really. They
only want a bit of money in their pocket, to spend at the Welfare, or go
gadding to Sheffield. That's all they care. When they've got no money,
they'll listen to the reds spouting. But nobody believes in it, really.'
`So you think there's no danger?'
`Oh no! Not if trade was good, there wouldn't be. But if things were
bad for a long spell, the young ones might go funny. I tell you, they're a
selfish, spoilt lot. But I don't see how they'd ever do anything. They
aren't ever serious about anything, except showing off on motor-bikes and
dancing at the Palais-de-danse in Sheffield. You can't make them serious.
The serious ones dress up in evening clothes and go off to the Pally to show
off before a lot of girls and dance these new Charlestons and what not. I'm
sure sometimes the bus'll be full of young fellows in evening suits, collier
lads, off to the Pally: let alone those that have gone with their girls in
motors or on motor-bikes. They don't give a serious thought to a
thing---save Doncaster races, and the Derby: for they all of them bet on
every race. And football! But even football's not what it was, not by a long
chalk. It's too much like hard work, they say. No, they'd rather be off on
motor-bikes to Sheffield or Nottingham, Saturday afternoons.'
`But what do they do when they get there?'
`Oh, hang around---and have tea in some fine tea-place like the
Mikado---and go to the Pally or the pictures or the Empire, with some girl.
The girls are as free as the lads. They do just what they like.'
`And what do they do when they haven't the money for these things?'
`They seem to get it, somehow. And they begin talking nasty then. But I
don't see how you're going to get bolshevism, when all the lads want is just
money to enjoy themselves, and the girls the same, with fine clothes: and
they don't care about another thing. They haven't the brains to be
socialists. They haven't enough seriousness to take anything really serious,
and they never will have.'
Connie thought, how extremely like all the rest of the classes the
lower classes sounded. Just the same thing over again, Tevershall or Mayfair
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