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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