Page 152 - lady-chatterlys-lover
P. 152
’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 bol-
shevism, 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 or Kensington. There was only
one class nowadays: moneyboys. The moneyboy and the
moneygirl, the only difference was how much you’d got,
and how much you wanted.
Under Mrs Bolton’s influence, Clifford began to take a
new interest in the mines. He began to feel he belonged. A
new sort of self-assertion came into him. After all, he was
the real boss in Tevershall, he was really the pits. It was a
new sense of power, something he had till now shrunk from
with dread.
Tevershall pits were running thin. There were only two
collieries: Tevershall itself, and New London. Tevershall
had once been a famous mine, and had made famous mon-
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