Mrs Trease held out a soft hand and said Howdedo? … Jim, I’m away out to the Pictures. See and not start the Revolution without me, there’s two kippers in the press if you’d like some meat, the police have been here this afternoon and the landlord’s going to give us the push. That’s all. Ta-ta. Trease gave her a squeeze and said that was fine, so long as nothing serious had happened; and told her to see and enjoy the picture, who was the actress? Greena Garbage? Well, that was fine; and gave Mrs Trease a clap on the bottom, out she went, Ewan standing and watching. And Trease came back and smiled at Ewan, big, creased: Ay. Think her a funny bitch?

Ewan said No, she seemed all right, was she a Communist as well? Trease gave his head a scratch, he’d never asked her, he’d aye been over-busy, her as well, moving from this place and that, chivvied by the bobbies, her ostracized by the neighbours and the like, never complaining though, canty and cheery—they’d had no weans and that was a blessing.

Ewan nodded and said he saw that, there wasn’t much time for the usual family business when you were a revolutionist. And Big Jim twinkled his eyes and said No, for that you’d to go in for Socialism and Reform, like Bailie Brown, and be awful indignant about the conditions of those gentlemanly coves, the suffering workers. And Ewan grinned at him, he at Εwan, neither had a single illusion about the workers: they weren’t heroes or gods oppressed, or likely to be generous and reasonable when their great black wave came flooding at last, up and up, swamping the high places with mud and blood. Most likely such leaders of the workers as themselves would be flung aside or trampled under, it didn’t matter, nothing to them, THEY THEMSELVES WERE THE WORKERS and they’d no more protest than a man’s fingers complain of a foolish muscle.

And Trease made the tea and they cooked the kippers and had a long chat on this and that, not the revolution, strikes or agitprop, but about skies and stars and Ewan’s archæology that he’d loved when he was a kid long ago, Trease knew little or ought about it though he’d heard of primitive communism. He said he misdoubted they’d ever see workers’ revolution in their time, capitalism had taken crises before and would take them again, it was well enough organized in Great Britain to carry ten million unemployed let alone the two and a half of today, Fascism would stabilize and wars help, they were coming, the wars, but coming slow.