No labour troubles had ever disturbed the relations which existed between him and his men.

It was thus no small shock when Wickes announced one day that a Grievance Committee wished to interview him.

That he should have to meet a Grievance Committee, whose boast it had been that the first man in the works to know of a grievance was himself, and that the men with whom he had toiled and shared both good fortune and ill, but more especially the good, that had befallen through the last quarter century should have a grievance against him--this was indeed an experience that cut him to the heart and roused in him a fury of perplexed indignation.
"A what?
A Grievance Committee!" he exclaimed to Wickes, when the old bookkeeper came announcing such a deputation.
"That's what they call themselves, sir," said Wickes, his tone of disgust disclaiming all association with any such organization.
"A Grievance Committee ?" said Mr.Maitland again.

"Well, I'll be! What do they want?
Who are they?
Bring them in," he roared in a voice whose ascending tone indicated his growing amazement and wrath.
"Come in you," growled Wickes in the voice he generally used for his collie dog, which bore a thoroughly unenviable reputation, "come on in, can't ye ?" There was some shuffling for place in the group at the door, but finally Mr.Wigglesworth found himself pushed to the front of a committee of five.

With a swift glance which touched "the boss" in its passage and then rested upon the wall, the ceiling, the landscape visible through the window, anywhere indeed rather than upon the face of the man against whom they had a grievance, they filed in and stood ill at ease.
"Well, Wigglesworth, what is it ?" said Grant Maitland curtly.
Mr.Wigglesworth cleared his throat.