"What's become of
those noble high wages of yours?--I seem to have knocked the
stuffing all out of them, it appears to me."
But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that
is all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had
walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was _in_ a trap. I could
have shot him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling
intellect he fetched this out:
"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is _proved_ that our wages
be double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefrom
the stuffing?--an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the
first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted
me to hear it."
Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on
his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with
him and were of his mind--if you might call it mind. My position
was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified
more? However, I must try:
"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages are
merely higher than ours in _name_, not in _fact_.
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