Front matter (continued 3)

“Send for Moll now. I must lie down. You won’t forget Moll, when I am gone. She is a good soul, and has tended me well.”

The old man was assisted to his bed, and sank exhausted on the pillow. There was silence in the darkling chamber, save for the heavy breathing of the fast failing man.

“Read me the twenty-first Psalm,” he said, presently.

But Tom’s voice failed him, and broke as he read:

“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.’”

And Tom kneeled by the bedside, and hid his face in the coverlet, nor restrained his tears.

And the light trembling hand of him who had so loved him rested on the bowed head, and the feeble voice was raised in prayer and benediction.

And the night fell and the “peace that passeth all understanding” entered therein and there abode.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE legacy left him by Mr. Black amounted to no less than a hundred pounds, which seemed to Tom a vast sum. Mr. Redfearn was sole executor of the will. Tom took possession of the books,—a few choice Latin authors, the Greek Testament, and many educational works. He selected, besides, a few articles of furniture, of which he made a present to Mrs. Garside; he did not forget Moll o’ Stuarts. Out of the proceeds of the portion of the furniture which he sold, there was just enough to pay for a mourning suit of good broadcloth for himself, and strangely ill at ease he felt when first he beheld himself arrayed in the glossy doeskin. But after the funeral, he had only to wear it on Sundays, when most people who could manage it by hook or crook contrived to wear decent suits, mainly of black,—black was the general, if not “the only wear.” The reason is not far to seek. Among the working-classes the better suit is a very distinct garment from what are called emphatically “wartday clo’es,” and is seldom worn except on Sunday, and at funerals.

There remained the hundred pounds, and the question was not easy of answer, what should he do with it? Under the will, Mr. Redfearn had power to apply the money for Tom’s advancement in life, even before his majority when it was to pass into his uncontrolled disposition. Tom cudgelled his brain so much and so vainly as to the ultimate application of this immense sum that he came to be thankful he could not, as yet, touch the bulk, or he would have been tempted to throw it into the river. He did not get much help from Mr. Redfearn.

“Yo’ see, Tom,” said his guardian, “a hundred pounds is a very awk’ard sum o’ money. It’s summat like a gooise, which is too much o’ a meal for one, an’ not enuff for two. Nah this legacy o’ yo’rs is summat i’th’ same fashion. It’s too much to go on th’ spree wi’, an’ ha’ done wi’ it, an’ off yo’r mind, so to speeak, and it’s too little to set up i’ business on yo’r own account,—at leastwise i’ ony business ’at’s likely to suit thee. Yo’ might start i’th’ grocery line, to be sure, but I doubt th’ little childer ’ud be feart to come into th’ shop if they seed six feet of brawn and muscle behind th’ counter. Besides they say it tak’s a very light hand to weigh grocer’s stuff aat to ony profit. I can think o’ nowt else. You might go into th’ public line on yo’r furtin in a smallish way, an’ there’s one thing ’at’s i’ yo’r favour, yo’d nooan want a chuckor aat.”

Tom shook his head emphatically: “Nay,” he said, “I will never make my living by giving my brother strong drink to his hurt.”

Redfearn laughed, “they’ll call yo’ ‘Parson Tom’ in a bit, lad. But happen yo’r i’th’ reight on it. For one gooid word yo’ can find to say for drink yo’ can find a hundred to say agen it, an’ then start afresh an’ tack another hundred to it. Folk will have it, but them as get’s th’ leeast has th’ best share, an’ I’ll nivver be one to set a young lad i’ th’ way o’ temptation. But has ta thowt o’ onything thi sen?”

Tom shook his head. “I’ve thought till I’m almost stalled of the thought of the money.”

“Well, there’s no hurry, that’s one comfort. Th’ brass ’ll nooan get less so long as it’s ith’ bank, that’s a sure thing. An’ yo’re not be out o’ your indentures yet. Tak’ yo’r time i’ makin’ up your mind, an’ remember ’at it’s th’ easiest thing i’ th’ world to put good money into business, but it’s quite another thing getting it back after yo’n once let go yo’r how’d.”

On one point Tom was quite resolved. So soon as his apprenticeship should be at an end, and sooner if might be, he would be his own master. He would not live and die a weaver, nor yet be content even to live and die a slubber. Other men had conquered Fate and he was resolved that by God’s help, he, too could and would. Why, the whole valley in which he did his daily task abounded with men who could tell of early privations, of years of patient unremitting toil, of Spartan endurance, of privations self-imposed and cheerfully borne, and of a notable success crowning and rewarding in middle life, the efforts of their youth and manhood’s prime. And Tom felt that he had him the makings of a man and though he had, as yet, unbosomed the inner workings of his soul to man nor woman, being, indeed more given to seek commune with himself rather than another, yet was his mind firmly fixed either to make a spoon or spoil a horn, as the saying goes. But how?

He had said nothing at home, as he now considered Ben Garside’s, about his little fortune, and as for the furniture which he had placed in the little cottage, Hannah declared, and meant it, that though it was “gooid on ’im to think o’ old fr’en’s, an’ like ’im, ’oo wer’ nooan so greedy as to do owt but store th’ thin’s for ’im, till such times as he wer’ wed, and warst wish ’at ’oo could wish ’im wer’ ’at he’d wed a lass ’at ’ud put as gooid a shine on th’ owd table, an’ cheers, an’ th’ oak-chest an’ linen-press and charney-cupboard as ’oo’d done, but that wer’ past prayin’ for now-a-days.”

There is no question that in this time of electricity and daily papers, news travels faster than in the times of our grandfathers but it travelled fast enough even then. And somehow it began to be whispered about the village that Gentlemen Tom “had come in for a fortin’.” with that delicacy of reserve which is nowhere more to be found than among the better end of the working classes, neither Ben, nor Hannah, nor Lucy spoke to him on the matter. It was his concern, and if he choose to have secrets from his best well-wishers they were not going to force his confidence; though it cannot be denied that when neighbours questioned Hannah on the subject, as she stood with her flour-poke and basket waiting her turn at Split’s counter of a Saturday afternoon she could give to her sibs no more satisfactory reply, than to tell them “to mell (meddle) o’ their own business, an’ ’ood try, God helping her, to mell o’ hers,”—a reply which was no more satisfactory to herself than to her gossips, for it not only brought a discussion of a highly interesting domestic topic to an untimely end, but it deprived Hannah of that assumption of exclusive intelligence which is as dear to a woman of conversational gifts as to a newspaper editor. But when Tom became aware by many subtle signs that not only had people heard something of his windfall, but that Hannah was piqued by his silence he resolved to take counsel with Ben. Even should he get no better advice than to seek advice.

“Ah, it’s a seet o’ brass lad, is a hunderd paands, an’ a gret responsibility. Aw dunnot think aw ivver seed more nor ten all at onc’t, an’ that fair med me gip.” It was thus Ben delivered himself one Sunday afternoon as he smoked his pipe before the kitchen fire. “Aw knew tha’d do nowt wi’out speikin’ to me or yar Hannah abaat th’ job, an’ we thowt no waur o’ thi’ for howdin’ thi tongue abaat it i’steead o’ makkin a spreead abaat it waur nor a peeacock wi’ it’s tail as some ’ud ha’ done. An’ as for wearin’ th’ brass o’ drink an’ wenchin’, as some ’ud ha’ done; why it wer better for thi’ ’at tha’ sud ha’ had a millstone then raand thi neck an’ bin plumped fair i’ th’ middle o’ th’ mill-dam.”

“Yes, but Ben, I can discover for myself what I should not do with the money; what I want to settle is what I should do with it.”

“It’s safe enew wheer it is, isn’t it?” asked Hannah, anxiously.

“Well, it’ as safe as the bank, any way,” Tom assured her.

Hannah seemed dubious. “Aw dunnot ma’ mich accaant o’ them banks. Ther’ wer’ Ingram’s, tha’ll mind oo’, Ben, i’ Hundersfild. It went dahn th’ slot an’ lots o’ folk lost ther brass through it. Aw’d just as sooin put my bit i’ th’ teea-caddy—but we’re nivver safe, as th’ lad said when he fun’ a sov’rin’.”

Ben had puffed his pipe in silence, but now waved the long churchwarden to bespeak attention.

“There’s yo’r writin’s to think on,” he said. “Yo’ munnot forget as yo’r bun’ to Jabez Tinker till y’or twenty-one, an’ thof mebbe nob’dy could blame yo’ if yo’ just went yo’r own gate as if th’ writin’s weren’t ther; still aw misdoubt me th’ law ’ud ha’ summat to say: an’ if yo’ once get into th’ lawyers’ han’s aw reely dunnot think yo’ need bother yo’rsen abaat what yo’ mun do wi’ yo’r fortin’.”

“But, Ben, whatever comes I mean to do the square thing by Mr. Tinker. I’ve served him faithfully up to now, and I don’t mean to end up by doing otherwise. But don’t you think he would release me, if it were fairly put to him, and he received some equivalent.”

“He mote,” said Ben, “an’ then agen he moten’t. But ther’s no harm i' axin’.”

“Aye, that’s just like yo’ men,” said Hannah, “nowt’ll do but goin’ at a thing like a bull at a red rag. Tom mun step i’ to th’ caantin’-haase, an’ say: ‘If yo’ please Mr. Tinker, aw’d like yo’ to breik mi writin’s, aw’n had some brass left me.’ Nah, that’s nooan my way.”

“Well, what is it, Hannah?”

“Sayin’s tellin’, an’ if aw tell’d yo’, yo’d be as wise as me. Th’ question is, what mun Tom do when he’s free?”

“Aye, that’s it,” said Tom. “Well aw ’ve my plan, Tom, if th’ missus, theer ’ll let a man get a word in edgeways. Nah! Hannah, if th’rt fair run daan aw ’ll go on.” Hannah disdained to make reply.

“Nah! my advice is,” said Ben, “just go on, as it were, quiet, for the next few months; but i’stead o’ bein’ satisfied i’ th’ mill wi’ just doin’ what tha’rt set to, keep thi een oppen an’ tak’ th’ cotton wool aat o’ yo’r ears, if yo’ happen to have ony in, an’ larn all ther’ is to larn at Tinker’s. He ’greed to teeach thee th’ trade o’ a clothier, an’ aw’ll be bun’ he has’nt swopped ten words wi’ yo’ sin a ’prentice yo’n bin an’ as for that druffen swill-tub, th’ slubber, he might teich yo’ th’ differ atween th’ feel o’ a strap an’ th’ feel o’ a pickin’-rod abaat yo’r back, an’ that’s abaat all. But till th’ time comes for thee to oppen aat to Tinker, aw’d recommend yo in a quiet way, to larn all tha can. Get to know th’ feel an’ th’ qualities o’ wool, an’ th’ prices, an’ th’ natur’ o’th’ dyes an’ acids, an’ aboon all mak frien’s wi’ th’ tuner, an’ larn to gear a machine, an’ tune it when it’s aat o’ gear.”

Tom nodded.

“Weel,” went on Ben, “as aw’n said. A hunderd paand ’s a seet o’ brass, an’ if yo’ know yo’r way abaat yo’ can get a set o’ machines wi’ it—what ’ll do for a start ony road i’ a sma’ish way, which is th’ best rooad an’ choose hah! Yo’ll ha nooa difficulty i’ gettin’ room an’ power, an’ what’s more, if yo’ winnot think awm sayin’ one word for thee an’ two for mysen, if yo’ like to start i’ manifactorin’ o’ thi own accaant, owd Ben Garsed’s mony a yer o’ gooid wark in him yet an’ he’ll be yo’r man, an’ that’s more nor he’d say for ony other being ’at walks o’ two legs atween here an’ th’ next spot.”

Tom’s eyes sparkled with a sudden light, and he leaped to his feet to the imminent peril of his head against the rafters.

“The very thing,” he cried, “the very, very thing. ‘Oh! wise King, oh! prudent King’—stupid that I was never to think of it before, couldn’t see wood for trees.—Lucy, you shall be our book-keeper. Let me see—Garside and Pinder, woollen manufacturers Holmfirth. Carried unanimously. Put it. Lucy, put it and hold up both your hands. My word, Ben, but you’ve a headpiece if you like. We’st nivver mend o’ that idea if we talk fro’ now till Doomsday. But will th’ money run to it?”

“Ben ’ll ha’ considered that,” said Hannah.

“He’s a deep un, is Ben, an’ if he wadn’t talk so much wod mak’ heead way yet; but it’s ’im for goin’ round an’ round a thing an’ under it an’ ovver it afore he’s made his mind up. Yo’n awmost to shak’ him to get an opinion aat on him sometimes.”

“Aw waren’t long i’ makkin’ up mi mind abaat one thing ony road th’ time aw clapt mi e’en o’ thee, lass,” said Ben, with a wink that comprehended both Tom and Lucy.

“Aye, an’ aw didn’t gi’ time to unmak’ it, noather,” chuckled Hannah, and cast a glance at Ben that made her look thirty years younger and set him thinking of the days when an apparently chance shaft from Hannah’s eyes set his heart a pit-a-pat.

“Aye, lad,” said Ben, “there’s folk started i’ this valley wi’ less nor a hundred pun’, ’at fairly stinks o’ brass naah. It’s noan th’ brass altogether ’at does th’ trick; there’s more i’ knowin’ haa to use it, an’ more still in knowin’ haa to keep what yo’ mak’ an’ turn it ovver an’ ovver like a rolling snowball. There’s mony a man can mak’ brass but it’s stickin’ to it bothers ’em.”

And so it was settled that Tom should bide his time, making haste slowly, as the Roman sage advises, and that, meanwhile, Ben should keep his weather-eye open for room and power.

And Tom was not content with such knowledge as could be acquired in the Mill. Although his hours at the loom were long enough in all conscience, and he certainly led laborious days, he resolved also to shun luxurious nights, if idling through the evenings with a novel of Sir Walter Scott or doing odd jobs about the house for Hannah Garside or, in the summer, strolling about the lanes and over the moors could be said to constitute a luxury. He joined the classes at the Mechanics’ Institute and nightly wrestled with the mysteries of Euclid, chevied the elusive x through algebraic equations, acquired enough of statics and dynamics to be appalled by the height, depth, and breadth of his own ignorance, and enough of chemistry to bring him to the same conclusion that the highway to ruin would be to trust to his own knowledge of that weird and fascinating science. But if of learning to be likely to be really useful in the career he had marked out for himself, Tom attained to little enough, his mind was all the better for the mental gymnastics his studies compelled. The books he conned demanded close application and sustained thought, and so, had he learned nothing from them at all, were an intellectual discipline that would tell in the battle of life, and rescued him from that flabby habit of mind that comes from desultory and random reading.

It was noticed too, that about this time Tom forsook in some measure his first love, the services of the Established Church, and became a very frequent worshipper at Aenon Chapel. Ben declared that he couldn’t make head or tail of this change from country walks turned to profitable account, as Ben conceived, by Ben’s discursive utterances de omnibus rebus et aliis praterca, but more particularly and recurringly concerning the high metaphysics of Calvinistic theology.

“There’s a screw loose, somewhere,” he remarked solemnly to Hannah one Sunday afternoon when Tom, after brushing his suit of woe very sedulously and looking more than once in the little cracked glass to see if his tie were rightly bunched and his “toppin” duly “lashed” and parted had sidled rather shamefacedly out of the house with a hymn-book in one hand, whilst with the fore-finger of the other he assured himself that the coin destined for the collection box nestled securely in the corner of his waistcoat pocket. Hannah stayed her rocking and smoothed the sheen of her silken apron, but was mute.

“Aye,” continued Ben, “aw cannot tell whativver’s come ovver th’ lad. Aw say nowt agen his buryin’ his nose i’ books e’ery neet, an’ hardly goin’ to bed till aw’m thinkin o’ gettin’ up. That’s improvin’ his mind, that is, at least aw hope so—it’s only to be hoped he won’t addle it i’th process. But this chapel-goin’s beyond me. Mind yo’, aw nivver said so mich abaat his gooin’ to th’ church o’ a mornin’. He wer’ browt up so, and Mr. Black set a deal o’ store on it, so it wer’ like honourin’ yo’r father an yo’r mother, in a fashion o’ speikin’. But, dal me, chapel-goin’s like turnin’ his back on th’ church altogether. What does ta mak on it, Hannah?”

“Nowt,” said Hannah, and Ben knew from experience that the wife of his bosom thought more than she was minded to tell.

“If it hadn’t been Tom,” continued Ben in a meditative and perhaps something of a tentative strain, “Tom ’at’s as steady as a booat-hoss aw sud be enclined to speckilate ther’ wer’ a wench at th’ bottom on it. What do’st think, Lucy, has he said owt to yo’ abaat it?”

“No, father. Tom has said nothing but that the new minister at Aenon ’s a very good preacher. One o’ th’ new school, he says.”

“Aye, aye, aw’n yerd abaat him. ‘A wind-bag,’ some o’th owd hands ca’ ’im. Bi all aw can mak’ aat he’s a trimmer ’at sets his sails to catch the wind o’ approval fro’ th’ upper seats o’ th’ ‘orthodox, orthodox Sons o’ auld John Knox,’ an’ the gale o’ applause fro’ th’ young ’uns ’at ’ud like to kick ovver th’ traces. He’s noather fish, nor flesh, nor fowl, nor gooid red herrin’—so folk sen, an’ goes on refinin’ an’ refinin’ and explainin’ till Deacon Whiteley says he’s refined and explained th’ owd Trust Deed away, an’ ther’s lots o’th owder end dunnot know whether they’re stood o’ their heads or their heels. An’ they dunnot hauf like th’ Band o’ Hope ’at he’s started i’ connection wi’ th’ Sunday Schooil, though aw’ll say nowt agen that missen.”

“It ’ud be a gooid thing if they’d ha’ a Band o’ Hope for th’ grown-up childer,” said Hannah. “I fancy from what Tom said to me t’other neet—I mean night,” began Lucy.

“Neet’s gooid enew,” interrupted her mother in a sharper tone than Lucy often heard. “Though awm awmost forced to be dumb, when yo’r father’s got owt to say, awm noather deaf nor blind, thank God; an’ aw’n noticed lately ’at Tom’s getten into a fine way o’ speikin’,—Miss Nancyfied aw ca’ it,—an’ yo’r followin’ suit. There’ll be no livin’ wi’ oather on yo’ sooin if it goes on.”

“Well, what is it yo’ wouldn’t be capped at?” asked Ben, by way of diversion.

“If Tom joined the Band of Hope,” said Lucy quietly, and, one would have judged, sadly.

“Th’ lad’s clean off,” said Ben. “That brass has bin too mich for his yed. Wi’ most folk it runs to drink, but aw reckon it depends o’ th’ constitooshun. But, dal me, if aw dunnot don missen up very next Sunday ’at ever is, an’ gooa wi’ ’im to th’ chapel an’ hear for missen; so, dooant forget, Hannah, to ha’ me a clean shirt, for aw munnot shame th’ lad.”

“Aye,” assented Hannah, “gooa, bi all meeans, an’ if a fooil’s advice worth’s takkin’, please thissen abaat keepin’ thi ears on th’ pulpit, but keep thi e’en on th’ pews.” And with this Delphic utterance Mrs. Garside began to lay the little round table for tea, with a clatter that threatened the longevity of the “chaney” cups and saucers that had descended with the Family Bible, and were almost as venerated.

And Lucy looked troubled with that trouble that seeks disguise in constrained cheerfulness.

“It’s a woman, then,” said Ben to himself. “Who’d ha’ thowt it, but whooa i’ th’ name o’ wonder can it be?”

Pursuant to his resolve, Ben, the next Sunday, volunteered to accompany Tom to Chapel, to Tom’s undisguised surprise.

“Well, yo’ see, lad,” explained the Senior, inwardly congratulating himself on the astuteness of his reply, “what’s gooid enough for thee ’ll daatless be gooid enough for thi partner ’at is to be.”

The Rev. David Jones was a man of middle stature, quick and nervous in his movements, and quick and nervous in his delivery. He had all the fire and not a little of the poetic feeling and imagination of his Welsh ancestry. He had the great gift of being able to see and understand the very crux of an abstruse problem and to state it lucidly. Then, when you held your breath for the solution, he would break into a rhapsody, and, in a torrent of words, metaphor piled upon metaphor in dazzling extravagance of phrase, he would scale the gamut of the emotions, and close the exordium as in the wild frenzy of an ancient seer.

“Ther’s a gooid deeal o’clout, Tom,” whispered Ben, “but aw’n nooan come to th’ puddin’.” But Ben spoke to ears that heard not. The rhapsodies of the eloquent Gael were thrown away on Tom. His eyes were fixed on the ample pew in which Mr. and Mrs. Tinker sat erect and listening apparently with much attention to the sermon. Mr. Tinker’s regard indeed, appeared to be more critical than appreciative.

“Jabez is too owd a bird to be ta’en wi’ chaff,” thought Ben. “Th’ parson’s main clever, reight enough, but there’s one yonder’s gotten his measure, or awm mista’en.”

But neither on his employer nor on the severe face of Mrs. Tinker was Tom’s wrapt look so intently fixed. By her uncle’s side sat Dorothy, looking, said Ben, in his afternoon account to Hannah, “just as if butter wouldn’t melt in her maath. She nivver took her e’en fro’ off her Bible or her hymn book or th’ parson, barrin’ once, an’ if ’oo didn’t look plainly at Tom then ’oo looked at me, that’s all aw can say. But it weren’t a look straight out o’ her e’en, yo’ mun understand, nor wi’ her eyes starin’ out o’ her yead, like some wenches ’ll look at a young felly; but just a sort o’ a squint aat o’th tail o’ her e’en, an’ then th’ lashes fell part way ovver ’em, an’ theer ’oo wer’ gazin’ at th’ parson as if ’ood nivver blinked. It’s a mercy ’oo didn’t look at me th’ same way again, or I’d ha’ made a fooil o’ missen some road or other, an’ chance it. An’ Tom, why he went as red as a peony, an’ his hand trem’led so he dropped a book an’ had to scrat it up wi’ his feet by reason o’th pew bein’ too narrow for him to get his yed dahn to reick it up wi’ his hand i’ th’ ordinary way. Aw poised his shin for ’im under th’ seeat to make him mind his manners for when aw do go to a chapel aw like to behave some-bit-like, an’ after that he listened to th’ sarmon as good as gowd.”

“And do you remember the text, father?”

“To be sure aw do, trust me for that. Aw gate Tom to nick it with his thumb in his book, an aw wer’ settlin’ dahn comfortable to th’ exposition when aw gate th’ full blast o’ Miss Dorothy’s look, choose ’oo it wer’ meant for. It had liked to ha’ bowled me ovver, but aw poo’d missen together, an’ aw’n getten th’ heads o’th discoorse. Reick us th’ Bible, missus. It wer’ eighth Romans, thirtieth. Read it up, Lucy.”

“Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

“Nah! I thowt to missen, we’re in for it. Aw liked th’ chap’s courage. It’s holus-bolus, nah, says I, an’ th’ owder end they looked up at th’ parson wi’ a grim sort o’ look as much as to say, ‘Get ovver that if yo’ can’ an’ then they glowered at th’ younger end wi’ a look ’at said as plain as a pikestaff, ‘he’s bahn to throw yo’ ovver’ nah, wi’ yo’r new criticism an’ yo’r refinin’s.’”

“An’ did he?” asked Lucy and her mother in a breath.

And it may be just as well to say here and once for all, for the benefit of those who through no fault of their own, to be sure, but to their great loss notwithstanding, have not the privilege of being Yorkshire bred and born, that half-a-century ago theological discussion was, among the mill-hands of the West Riding, as common as ratting or dog-fighting or as disputing over the form of a foot-ball player in these degenerate days. Any fine Sunday of the year, if you walked in the country, you would come across a group of men, gravely excited, discussing with acumen, and all the artillery of text and commentary, original sin, predestination, effectual calling and the inefficiency of works.

“And did he?”

Ben shook his head. “He’s a deep ’un is yon’. They ca’ folk ’at go to Church o’ a mornin’ an’ chapel i’ th’ afternooin, devil-dodgers; but yon’s waur, he’s a deacon-dodger. He knew as weel as he knew his dinner ’d be spoilin’ bi hauf-past twelve ’at ther’ wer’ owd Split an’ Tommy Shaw, not to say Jabez Tinker, at’s happen more charity, just simply waitin’ to lay howd on a word here an’ a sentence theer to condemn; but he slipped past ’em a’. It wer’ clivver aw’ll nooan gainsay, but it wer’ nooan honest. Yo’ve happen no reight to expect brains i’ a parson, but th’ leeast he can do is to be honest.”

“But yo’ dunnot tell us ha he han’led th’ text,” said his wife impatiently.

“Why th’ cream on it wer’ this: ’at th’ Almighty fro’ th’ beginnin’ had foreordained th’ law o’ righteousness, just th’ same as he foreordained th’ law o’ gravitation an’ he elected to salvation them as walked therein, an’ them as didn’t were rejected. Same as th’ law o’ combustion,” he said, “if yo’ put yo’r finger i’th’ fire God had pre-arranged ’at yo’ sud be burned, an’ sarve yo’ reight.”

“Why that’s common sense enough to please you, father, you couldn’t find fault with that.”

“Aye’ that wer’ reight enough; but yo’ should ha’ heeard th’ way he wrapped it up an’ dressed it i’th catch words o’ th’ hard-an’-fast Baptists, so as to mak’ them o’ th’ owder end think it wer’ all th’ owd dish sarved up a bit different. But it wern’t; it wer’ common sense an’ nat’ral religion dressed up to mak’ ’em sound like Calvinism. He caught th’ deacons sleepin’, as he thowt, an’ stole their clo’es; but Jabez Tinker saw through him, aw tell yo’, an’ so did Ben Garsed, if he is an’ owd foo.”

“And what did Tom say to it all?” asked Lucy.

“Tom! Aw’ve no patience wi’ Tom. He walked all th’ way whom as if he wer’ dreamin’, an’ all ’at aw could get out on him wer’ ’at pale blue went varry well wi some shades o’ yoller. He wer’ thinkin o’ his dyein’, yo’ see.”

“Was he for sure?” asked Mrs. Garside, “which dun yo’ think’s th’ blindest, Lucy, a bat or a mole?”

But Lucy was looking out of the window and answer made none.

CHAPTER IX.

NEHEMIAH WIMPENNY, of Holmfirth, “Gentleman, one of Her Majesty’s &c.,” in other words a solicitor, was the only legal practitioner in the village or neighbourhood, and though not more than thirty years of age, enjoyed a considerable practice. His father, Ebenezer, had been a successful manufacturer and a zealous Methodist. Presumably he believed that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Certainly he shared the common belief that lawyers are very scarce in the celestial regions. But these convictions did not deter him from storing up riches in this world, nor from bringing up his son to the legal profession. Perhaps he had confidence in the axiom that exceptions prove the rule.

Nehemiah was well cut-out for a country lawyer: he had the native shrewdness and common sense, and if he did not know much law he found common-sense a very good substitute for it. His local knowledge was like that of a historic character extensive and peculiar, and his father’s acquaintances and business connections who, at first from friendship, gave their business to young Nehemiah, had no reason to complain of lack of his attention to their interests or ability to protect them. In person he was of medium height, of sandy hair and pale complexion, with a cold and fishy eye and a cold and clammy hand. He dressed loudly and flashily, but as the extravagance of his raiment was attributed to a twelve months’ stay in London in the office of a town agent its fashion or propriety few questioned. He was fond of jewellery, and displayed a good deal of it on his person, and was supposed by envious young manufacturers and merchants to be a“devil among the women,”—a reputation of which he was not a little vain, and which he sustained by the amorous glances and doubles entendres of refreshment rooms and bars. He had spent a week in Paris, and hinted that he could an’ he would tell a thing or two about the iniquities of the gay city. This did not prevent Nehemiah from attending with laudable regularity at the Methodist Chapel, and anxious mammas with marriageable daughters, secure in the assurance that a reformed rake makes a very passable saint, viewed with complacency the attentions which it pleased this very common-place Lothario to pay to the virgins of their flock and fold; and the pastor of Zion Chapel himself, doubtless reflecting that he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and to heal those that were sick and not those that were whole, was very tender indeed to a church-member who gave weekly signs of grace in the form of substantial contributions to the collection box, and whose quarterly pew-rent could always be depended on. It is only fair to Nehemiah to say that he never permitted his dissipations which were possibly much exaggerated, to interfere with business, and that, however deep his potations of the previous night, he was always to be found at his desk with a clear head and a steady hand, a circumstance, of itself, that secured Nehemiah more appreciation in a hard-drinking community, than would have been inspired by an intimate acquaintance with the whole corpus juris.

Among his clients Nehemiah numbered Mr. Jabez Tinker, and he was therefore not surprised when the master of Wilberlee presented himself in the small, dingy, stuffy office which Nehemiah found sufficient for his needs. Mr. Tinker, of course, was well aware of the somewhat dubious moral character of the gentleman he had come to consult; but then he did not go to Nehemiah for morals but for professional assistance.

“Well, Mr. Tinker, and how do you find yourself this morning—warm, isn’t it.”

“Very,” said Mr. Tinker—“it’s warm, and it’s close for the time of the year. But any sort of weather ’ll do for your kind of work, I guess, Wimpenny.”

“Rather,—the warmer the better—get me used to a sultry climate. It’s as well to be prepared for the future, eh?”—Mr. Wimpenny’s expansive smile indicated his own appreciation of a very feeble jest; but his client’s countenance was not responsive.

“H’m,” said Mr. Tinker. “Well, Wimpenny, let’s get to business. I want to make my will, and it’s no use putting the thing off. I can always alter it?”

“Yes, yes, certainly—as long as a man lives he can alter his will, always supposing he remain compos mentis; and we’re all human, Mr. Tinker, we’re all human.”

“It shouldn’t be a very complicated affair either,” went on Mr. Tinker. “Unfortunately, except the house I live in.”

“Snug little hole, but too near the mill,” thought his adviser.

“Except that, practically all I have is tied up in my business.”

“And a very good business too, Mr. Tinker, by all accounts.”

“I’ve nothing to complain of in that score; but it is unfortunate as things have turned out that I did not arrange differently. You see, I’ve no son to carry on the concern after my death.”

The lawyer nodded assent.

“I must provide for my widow, of course. She must have the house and furniture for her life, and I thought of, say, three hundred a year—not a penny more, she’d only give it to the chapel.”

Again the lawyer nodded, making notes, as he listened, on a sheet of foolscap.

“That’s plain speaking,” went on Mr. Tinker, “but where’s the £300 to come from? That’s the difficulty. Mills aren’t easy to let, and the bigger they are the fewer people want them. I suppose there’s nothing for it but the hammer. It’s enough to make us Tinkers all turn in our graves. But there it is.—Even if Dick—you won’t remember my brother, Richard,—if he’d had a son, it would have been different.”

“But we all know he left a very charming daughter,” said Wimpenny with a bow and a smirk.

“Dorothy’s right enough,” said her uncle, curtly. “But you can’t turn her into a manufacturer. Though she’s a sort of partner all the same. You know her father died suddenly.”

Of course Wimpenny knew.

“And her father was part owner of the mill and business. Well, the girl’s money is in the business still.”

“Phew! that’s bad, Mr. Tinker.”

“I know it is, and the worst of it, I’ve kept no separate accounts. I’ve treated Richard’s share just as my own. But my will must put all that right. Subject to my wife’s provision Dorothy must have all. There’ll be nob’dy else for it.”

Wimpenny did not speak for some time. He chewed the end of his quill instead, a way he had when absorbed in thought.

“It’s a bad business Mr. Tinker;” he said at length; “it was scarcely like you to confound accounts in that loose fashion and to put trust money into what was practically your own business. People might call it by an ugly name.”

Jabez flushed angrily. “What do you mean, sir? I treated my niece as my daughter, brought her up in my house as my own child, and now I propose to leave her my sole heiress. Nothing very ugly about that, I should think.”

“Not as things have turned out,” was the reply, “but you know as well as I do they might have turned out differently, and where would your ward’s money have been? However, it’s to-day and tomorrow we’re concerned with, not yesterday. Has it occurred to you that Miss Dorothy may marry?”

“Of course she may. One doesn’t need to pay six-and-eight to learn that.”

“Exactly,” said the unruffled lawyer. “Now an adopted daughter and an adopted daughter’s husband are often quite two different beings, and should Miss Tinker marry it’s the husband we should have to reckon with.”

“Well, I could pay him out, I suppose?”

“Of course you could—by selling Wilberlee at a sacrifice, a great sacrifice, or by putting a heavy mortgage on the property if it would carry it. We must remember that there are eighteen years of profits to set-off against Miss Dorothy’s up-bringing, and the Court of Chancery does not weigh trustees’ profits in a hair-balance, I can tell you.”

Mr. Tinker rose impatiently. “I didn’t come here to have you raise difficulties but to meet them, nor yet to be frightened by bug-bears.”

“Now you are unreasonable, Mr. Tinker. I shouldn’t be worth my salt if I didn’t put the situation plainly before you. You don’t go to a doctor for smooth sayings nor yet for sweetmeats instead of pills. No use getting huffed, you know.”

But Mr. Tinker was huffed. He was a Tinker and a magistrate, and had been a man of mark these thirty years, and was not pleasant to be told these things by a young lawyer who might have been his son. But he had the good sense to know that what Nehemiah said was truth.

“Ah, well,” he said, “I dare say we are meeting trouble half-way. You know what I want doing. I did everything for the best, and I don’t know that I care very much what the world says or your infernal Court of Chancery either, if it comes to that. When will you have the will ready, Wimpenny?”

“Let me see. To-day’s Monday. Say Thursday of next week. We close for Whitsuntide, you know.”

“Very good, so be it. I’ll call in on that day. I’ll be glad to have the thing off my mind before the holidays. Mrs. Tinker’s at Harrogate, and I was thinking of running over for a few days. Till Thursday, then,” and Mr. Tinker went his way feeling less comfortable in his mind than he had done for many a long day.

“Confound the fellow,” he said to himself, wiping his brow, “and confound his stuffy little office, too. It’s worse than the sweating-room at the Bank.”

Left to himself Nehemiah Wimpenny sunk into a deep reverie; and, to judge from the faint smile that occasionally played upon his face, a not unpleasing one.

“So Miss Dorothy’s to be old Tinker’s heiress,” thus ran his thoughts, “and that means probably old Eph. Thorpe’s into the bargain. Guess I rather frightened the immaculate Jabez with that hint of a probable Chancery suit. Talk about men starting at their own shadows, as if any possible suitor for the fair Dorothy would dream of muddling away not only her fortune, but her expectations by going to law with a man who could leave him or not leave him thousands of pounds just as the fancy took him. Should have thought Tinker was more level headed. It isn’t the money he’s frightened of, it’s the scandal. These cold, reserved, proud men are always so devilish thin-skinned. Wonder who the happy man ’ll be.—Haven’t heard of anyone nosing around.”

“By Jove! why shouldn’t I cut in myself? She’s a pretty little filly and a high-stepper too. I’ve had my fling, and it’s about time I looked around for Mrs. Nehemiah. Wonder I never meet her out anywhere. Tinker keeps her up pretty close apparently, perhaps she doesn’t care for high-teas, small talk, and cribbage. Shows her sense.”

“Wonder how I can get to know her. No use fishing for an invitation to Tinker’s. Jove! I have it. Didn’t he say he was off to Harrogate to cheer up the old woman. Let’s see, Jabez is an Aenonite. H’m, I must sweeten the Reverend David—well that’s easy enough. Pity I don’t go to Aenon; but that’s soon got over. One chapel’s as good as another to a broad-minded man. All retail the same blooming rot. I mean they all lead to the same place. Different roads to the same city— that’s the phrase.”

“Whitsuntide is it, next week? Shouldn’t mind a run over to Scarborough. Better than sulphur-water at Harrogate, friend Tinker. Why! there’ll be the Sunday School treats, band, flags, processions stale buns and coffee grounds. The sportive Dorothy’s pretty sure to be doing the cheap philanthropic with the kids—and Nehemiah ’ll be there or thereabouts, you bet.”

“But I’ll make sure how Richard left his money. Hearsay’s all very well, but matrimony on hearsay might turn out a sell. I’ll get a copy of his will. But that’ll be all right, I fancy. Gad, it’s dry work thinking. I’ll step across and have a tiddley at the Crown, and I might as well take little Polly that pair of gloves I promised her. Heigho, I guess I’ll have to swear off lovely Pollys, at any rate till the honeymoon ’s over.”

But before the sagacious Wimpenny abandoned himself to the delights of gin-and-bitters and the lively sallies of the lovely Polly, he dropped a confidential note to his London agent to procure a copy of Richard Tinker’s will and such information as the archives of Somerset House could furnish to the interested or the curious as to the Residuary and Legacy accounts filed by the deceased’s executor, Mr. Jabez Tinker, to wit.

This missive despatched with his own hand Nehemiah turned his steps towards the Crown, feeling very much at peace with himself and fully entitled to bask in the sunshine of Polly’s ready smile. On the way he chanced across the pastor of Aenon Chapel, who was devoting his morning to calling upon sundry of his flock and getting up an appetite for his mid-day dinner.

“Good morning, Mr. Jones the very man I wanted to see. I’ve a crow to pull with you. Won’t there be the usual school treat this Whitsuntide?”

“Certainly, Mr. Wimpenny We’d a special prayer last meeting for a fine day.”

“Well, now, I go to Zion. But we Nonconformists are not so narrow as our Church friends, eh? So long as the good work goes on, that’s the main thing isn’t it?”

“Most assuredly, Mr. Wimpenny, most assuredly. We’re only tools in the great Worker’s hands.”

“Quite so, Mr. Jones, quite so; my sentiments to a T, only better expressed. Now I know these efforts of the Sunday School cost money. I’m not good enough to be a teacher; but you must let me help in my own way. I hoped you would have called, as your predecessor did, and asked for a subscription, then we could have had a comfortable chat,” and Nehemiah slipped a sovereign into the parson’s palm.

Now Mr. Jones had gone very recently over the list of subscribers to the various efforts and celebrations of Aenon Chapel, and flattered himself that he knew to a nicety the amount for which every inhabitant of Holmfirth “was good;” but he certainly could not remember to have seen Nehemiah Wimpenny’s name for so much as a widow’s mite. But perhaps the lawyer was one of those worthy men who do good by stealth and blush to find it known. So he had no qualms about pocketing the coin.

“They say open confession ’s good for the soul,” went on Nehemiah. “I was just on my way to have a nip and a snack at the Crown—just a glass of bitter, you know”—Oh! Nehemiah, Nehemiah!—“No use asking you, I know. The old Vicar, now, always had a glass of sherry with me when we met. But they say you are just ruining the trade, with your temperance sermons and your temperance missions. You mustn’t do that Mr. Jones; for if you shut up public-houses I might as well shut up shop too. Well, good day, good day.”

Mr. Jones’s face was beaming.

“Do they really say so?” he asked.

“Of course they do, and mean it. There isn’t a publican in the town but would rejoice to have you popped off like an Irish rack-renter. Oh! By the bye, whose field do you have on Monday for your gala? I might manage to have an hour’s romp with your youngsters—any road I could squander a few nuts and have them racing for oranges.”

“Mr. Tinker has kindly let us have the loan of his paddock at the rear of Wilberlee. We’ve had it for years, till the school almost expect it as a right.”

“I see, I see—a prescriptive right. A better sort of prescription than a doctor’s, eh?”

Mr. Jones accorded the tribute of a smile. “You don’t allow your drier studies to dull your sense of humour, I perceive. By the way, the dear children of Zion are joining us this year both in the procession and the after proceedings, so you will not be hampered by any sense of a divided duty. I must not omit to thank you for your generous donation, but I assure you we shall value your presence among us more highly than any gift.”

“Don’t mention it—a bagatelle. Wish it were more. Make it yearly. But now I really must be off or I shall miss my snack.”

“And your glass of—bitter? I think you said,”

“Ah, well, I’ll make it mild to-day. That’s next to teetotal, you know. Again, good day. Hope to have the pleasure of an introduction to Mrs. Jones on Monday.”

“What a very excellent young man,” mused the reverend divine, as he scurried through his calls. “I wish brother Brown of Zion put more fervour into Temperance work.—He might win that young man to the cause”—a conclusion Mr. Jones might have modified had he seen the wink with which the very excellent young man favoured himself as he took the steps of the Crown Hotel and called for his “usual, and a smile with it, please, Polly.”

“Miah’s in extra spirits this morning. Wonder who’s feathers he’s been plucking so early,” was the mental comment of the slim-waisted damsel as she handed the “usual” with a coquettish air and neatly evaded the proffered salute.

“There’s someone coming!” she whispered, as she skipped away.

“There always is, damn ’em,” said that very excellent young man.

Whit-Monday in Yorkshire is the saturnalia of the Sunday schools, a festival to which both teachers and taught look forward with delighted anticipation. A committee of the teachers and those members of the congregation who are supposed to be musically gifted, select the hymns to be sung at the services and at the halts of the procession on its route, and the discussion and final settling of the hymn-sheets are not always attended by the harmony appropriate to the occasion. The lives of the organist and the choirmaster are made a burden to them, and before the sheet reaches the printer there is often a coolness between ladies who had vowed eternal friendship. The scholars are very zealously drilled by the choirmaster, the girls singing with zest at the “practices,” the boys stimulating their attention by pulling their hair, but lifting up their own voices under protest. The young ladies of the Sunday School wear a subdued modification of their Sunday best at the week-night practices and as they have neither father nor mother to escort them home at the somewhat late hour to which the practices are prolonged, have to make shift with the arm of a blushing and embarrassed teacher from the Boys’ School, and, to do them justice, the young ladies cheerfully submit to be thus accompanied. If it should be discovered during the homeward walk of this sober minded Phyllis and Stephen of the mills that their voices go well together, the practising at the school not unfrequently conduces to domestic duets, never, let us hope, to matrimonial discords. An ingenuous bride, not long ago, assured the writer that she simply doted on the Sunday School. When asked for the reason, she naively confessed that it was there she first met her Billy. As this frank young lady has since sent in her resignation as a teacher, it is to be assumed that she now dotes on Billy to the detriment of the Sunday School; but she has not thought it necessary to return the time-piece presented to her by her fellow-teachers on the eve of her wedding-day.

He must be a very callous individual indeed who does not delight in the sight of the scholars as they marshal under the folds of the School flag, blazoned with the name of the chapel and borne in a somewhat staggering fashion by sturdy teachers who find consolation for their tribulations in the honour of being standard-bearers. Even a slattern mother and a drunken father will make a shift at sacrifice to turn the “childer” out decent for the “Whissun treat.” It is indeed the time of year when the yearly Sunday suit is chosen. Poverty must indeed have made its home in the house of a Yorkshire mill-hand if a white muslin frock and brilliant sash and a new straw hat with bright ribbons cannot be found for the girls, and a new suit, be the material never so rough, for the lads. It is a feast to the eyes to see the young coquettes—a maid of five is often a promising if not a quite accomplished coquette—arrayed in all their glory, conscious of their charms and severely critical of the gowns of their comrades. There is the exhilaration of the strains of the brass band—which in all probability will be comfortably drunk before the day is out; there is the fluttering of the silken banners in the summer breeze, and, above all, there is the consciousness of being the beheld of all beholders. The boys look either bored or ashamed of themselves and wish they were nearer the buns and nuts, for which they are gloomily conscious they will have to pay by submitting to the humiliating exactions of kiss-in-the-ring. Every door of the village is open as the long procession winds through the narrow streets, and anxious matrons and elder sisters watch for their own to see the sash has retained its bunch and the flounces have not given: also to receive the soothing assurance that Annie or Lizzie is dressed as smart as the best of them. Then there is the singing of a hymn at the minister’s house and before the deacons’ and—pleasantest feature of all the day’s proceedings—the lifting of the sweet young voices under the window of a sick companion who listens from a tear-stained pillow to the air she may never sing again. The distinction almost compensates for pain.

Among those watched the procession was Ben Garside, Hannah, and Lucy. She had been wheeled to the open door. Her father and mother stood on the other side. Tom was in his bedroom, “fettling hissen,” as Hannah put it. Ben had put on his better suit, and shaved himself in honour of the holiday,—the last holiday of the year for working-folk till Christmas should come again. There were no Bank Holidays in those days. Hannah had put on her somewhat rusty silk dress, and would have scorned to acknowledge that it pinched round the waist more than it did a year before. As the rear rank of the scholars and the last banner disappeared up the street, Tom’s feet were heard descending the stairs.

“Tom ’ll be for off, nah,” said Hannah, “pity he couldn’t ha’ his baggin’ so’s things wouldn’t be lyin’ abaat all hours.”

“Now Ben,” said Tom, cheerily, “I’m ready, are you?”

“By Gosh! Aw sud think yo’ are ready: stan’ ther an’ let’s ha’ a looik at yo’.”

Tom laughed, and stood to attention. “Do the creases show very much?” he asked, “I feel like a draper’s parcel wrapped in brown paper.”

It was a great event. Tom had got a suit of navy blue serge for the summer, and it fitted him like a glove.

“Aw mun gi’ yo’ a pinch for new,” said Hannah, nipping the upper arm.

“An’ put a penny in his pocket,” added Lucy, “for luck.”

“It should be a shilling if it’s to match the pinch,” laughed Tom, rubbing his arm. “But where’s your bonnet, Hannah, and your hat, Lucy?”

“What’s ta thinkin’ on, Tom?” asked Ben.

“Why that we’re all going to the field together. I’m going to wheel Lucy and stand by her, and you and Hannah are to enjoy yourselves with the other young folk.”

Ben protested he wouldn’t budge an inch. “Not but what he liked to see th’ childer enjoy theirsen, but Whissunday wer’ a heathenish festival an’ a relic o’ superstition.”

“But you’ve knocked off work and donned—I mean dressed yourself,” remonstrated Tom.

“Aye at nooinin’. Who could wark wi’ that blethrin’ brass band brayin’ up an’ down th’ street?”

Mrs. Garside looked at Lucy. “It ’ud be a treeat for th’ lass,” she said.

“I should like it, but I should only be a hindrance. Fancy Tom standing by me for hours at a stretch and all the other young men in the field enjoying themselves. Take mother, father, and I’ll stop at home. No one will run away with me.” she added bravely, but there was a tear in her voice.

“If you stop at home, I stop,” said Tom emphatically. “Besides, as for being tied to your side all the time, when you get tired of me, and mother there’s tired of mooning about with Ben, we can take turn and turn about. I couldn’t enjoy myself a bit if you were stuck here all by yourself, and what’s more, I won’t try.”

“Well, then, that sattles it,” said Hannah. “We’ll all go, an’ th’ haase mun tak’ care on itsen. Awst put mi silver spooins i’ mi pocket, an’ there’s nowt else ’at means owt. Nah! Ben, stir thee, mon, an’ dunnot stan’ theer like a stuck sheep.”

“Aw’m ready,” said Ben, “Aw’n nowt to do but don mi cap an’ that won’t tak me as long as it’ll tak’ thee to don thi bonnet. Tom an’ me could go to the field an’ be back afore yo’ an’ Lucy ’ll be ready.”

“Aw said stir thee. Put th’ kettle on. What’s th’ use o’ goin’ to th’ field an hour afore there’ll be ony theer. Tha doesn’t want a whole field to thissen, does ta? We’ll ha’ us baggin afore we start, an’ then we’st ha’ th’ day i’ front on us.”

“But aw could put mi finger dahn mi throit an’ feel mi dinner yet,” demurred Ben. “It’s nooan three o’clock bi th’ Church.”

“That’s noah odds. Aw’m nooan baan to ha’ thee worritin’ me all th’ afternooin becos yo’n nooan had thi baggin, an happen sneakin’ off into th’ village to get a pint becos tha’s a sinkin’ i’ thi’ stomach, an’ me lookin’ for thi all ovver th’ field, wanderin’ abaat gawpin’ as if aw’d just bin let loise aat o’th ’sylum, an’ thee stuck at th’ Cropper’s Arms as large as life, makkin’ a beeast on thisen becos it’s Whissunday. Nooah! if yo’ dunnot want yo’r baggin nah, yo’ mun ha’ it agen yo’ do want it.”

Hannah’s feet and hands had been as busy as her tongue. She had turned up the skirt of her gown and put an apron over all, spread the cloth, fetched up the bread and the butter, cut and spread thick slices for herself and the men, and thin ones for Lucy, washed the lettuce, radishes, and shallots, smoothed the top of the salt-cellar, set Tom to toasting a couple of currant teacakes, produced a jar of raspberry jam and mashed the tea before you could say Jack Robinson.

“Aw’ve getten a caa-heel for thi supper, an’ tha can bring thisen a pint o’ Timmy (best ale) for supper as it’s holiday time,” she conceded to Ben, evidently in great good humour with herself at the prospect of their outing.

And so as the large field near Mr. Tinker’s house—there was but a privet hedge separating it from the house garden—began to fill, as the boys and girls gathered from their respective school-rooms, flushed from their hasty tea-drinking, the lads not without a guilty consciousness of a filched bun bulging their trousers pocket, as the brass band played their final tune before withdrawing to the nearest inn to partake of something better than “spotted Dick an’ washin’-up watter,” as a member irreverently styled the scholars’ repast, Ben Garside sauntered into the field trying to look as if Sunday School treats were an every-day occurrence of his life, Hannah sailed behind, whilst Tom with Lucy brought up the rear. There grew a large beech tree on the slope of the ground, and under its full-leaved branches Tom drew the chair in which Lucy sat, her cheeks faintly tinged with a delicate bloom and her eyes sparkling with the unwonted excitement. Her mother raised her to a sitting posture and settled the cushions and wraps as only she could, and “theer yo’ are, lass,” she concluded, with a fond look at her darling child, “theer yo’ are as right as ninepence.” But the mother’s heart was full as she remembered the day, but as yesterday, when Lucy’s little feet would have skimmed the greensward light as a fairy’s dance.

But Hannah was not long suffered to indulge in reflections sad or otherwise she was a popular character in the village, and everyone knew that Hannah’s bark was worse than her bite. Soon the good wives of the village began to stroll about the field, scanning each others’ dresses, and exchanging kindly greetings, whilst their good men sought secluded corners where they might enjoy a furtive pipe, and talk over the topics of the day; the serious minded discussing the last sermon, the pugnacious revelling in the shortcomings of Parliament and the misdeeds of ministers. A small group gathered round Lucy’s chair, some of them rosy-cheeked young lasses, who had worked with Lucy in the mill, and who now brought up their young men to be exhibited with all the pride of conquest. And Lucy had a smile and pleasant word for all, and many a strapping swain, as he lounged past the nook where Lucy held her little Court and let his glance dwell upon the delicate face with its refined and chastened beauty, knew rebellious thoughts against the fate that had put the crippled girl beyond the sighs and vows of man; and grey-headed grandsires, bent with age and toil, recalled the former days when they had suffered and striven for the easier lot their children owned.

“Eh! but it’s gran’ to see yo’, Hannah,” one would say, “Why aw declare aw hannot seen yo’ donned up an’ aat sin’ we put owd Susan o’ ’Lijah’s under th’ graand. An’ yo’ do looik weel to be sure, an’ aw will say ’at if theer’s a woman i’ th’ village ’at does her clo’es credit it’s yo’, Hannah. And your Lucy, too, aw declare oo’s quite a colour. Yo’re lookin’ mony a pund better nor th’ last time aw seed thi, Lucy, an’ tha mun keep thi heart up, lass, theer’s no tellin’ yet. See yo’ Hannah, theer’s yar Jud (George) an’ yo’r Ben t’other side o’th’ field, an’ Jud’s shakkin’ his fist i’ Ben’s face, an’ Ben’s dancin’ like peeas on a bake-ston’. It’s them plaguing politics, but they’re enjoyin’ theirsen. An’ theer’s yar ’Tilda yonder i’th’ kiss-i’th-ring an Jim Sykes after her. Run, lass, run—eh! he’s caught her. Th’ clumsy felly, he’ll rive all th’ clo’es off her back. Gi’ ’im one an’ get it ovver. Eh! it fair ma’es one young agin to see th’ young folk enjoy theirsen.”

Lucy had insisted on Tom joining the revels of the field, the gay and innocent sports of the youths and maidens, and her eyes followed him as he joined in the games at “Tirzy,” hand ball, and what not. But Tom’s thoughts seemed elsewhere, and Lucy knew that his eyes wandered from the laughter-ringing throngs to the rustic gate that led from Wilberlee to the pasture land.

“He’s watching for Dorothy,” she thought, and there passed, maybe, a shadow over Lucy’s gentle face, “and there comes Dorothy herself. Ah! well, I knew it long ago. God send it may not spoil our Tom’s young life.”

There was a rush of twinkling little feet to meet the young mistress of Wilberlee as she passed slowly through the gateway, and moved into the field, clad in a loose gown of sprayed muslin of palest blue. She swung her hat in one hand that the soft cool air might play about her face, and the rays of the declining sun gleamed upon the auburn tresses, and gave them a golden sheen.

A dozen youngsters danced up to her, shouting their childish welcome, and more than one little toddlekin did Dorothy catch up in her arms and kiss. They danced round her as she walked up the field, or clasped her hand to claim her for some favourite game. And Dorothy smiled down upon the uplifted faces, and made feint to run away from them, but was captured and prisoned in their midst. And so, surrounded by bright and happy faces, Dorothy moved about the field, speaking to many, and giving a pleased recognition to all she knew,—and there was not a man or woman of Aenon chapel she did not know, not a worker at her uncle’s mill she could not address by name.

“As free as th’ air, Miss Dorothy is,” said one, “but she never demeans herself nor forgets she’s th’ young mistress.” And the hands respected her, the more for it. The working people of the mills knew their place, and were not ashamed of it, nor servile to those above them. They did not care that anyone should assume a familiarity they knew must be feigned and which they were bound to suspect.

The Rev. David Jones was in his glory. He had shaken hands with everyone there above the age of thirteen, had inquired about everyone’s health as though he loved them, and their pains were his, had narrowly escaped being decoyed into a game at romps, and had looked as though he liked it when a hand-ball knocked off his hat. This did not prevent him confiding to Mrs. Jones, a placid little woman who took life serenely, that he should be glad when it was all over.

As the afternoon wore to evening and the pastor, wearied of parading the field and repeating stale vacuities, he saw, with the pleasure we experience when we realize what we had hoped for rather than expected, that young Wimpenny had not forgotten his half-promise of a day or two ago. Wimpenny was speaking to the minister of his own chapel, a meek, timid man, but hard-working, sincere and self-sacrificing, beloved of little children and their mothers, and for whom even the hard-hearted operatives had a good word. The lawyer was not long in making his way towards Mr. Jones.

“You see I have been able to come, though I’m afraid I’m a late scholar. Won’t you introduce me to Mrs. Jones?” and the introduction was duly made. The three paced together through the changing throng, parted occasionally when some eager urchin, in full cry after the flying ball, darted under the parson’s arms or a breathless Daphne, with ringlets streaming in the breeze, fled in simulated fright from a pursuing swain.

“Miss Tinker seems to be enjoying herself,” said Nehemiah to Mrs. Jones, after he had duly admired her own numerous offspring whom she had indicated in various quarters of the field.

“Is she as nice as she is pretty?”

“Yes, she is very nice, and seems fond of the people. She spoils the children though,—my husband is sometimes a little put out. She does not take life seriously enough, she says, and he is vexed she won’t be baptised, though she is quite old enough to become a full church member. I asked her if she had religious scruples that Mr. Jones could assist her to banish; but she only laughed and said the immersion costume of the girls was hideous enough to account for a bushel of scruples without searching further. But then you know she is Mr. Tinker’s niece, and I daresay she is indulged too much at home.”

Nehemiah did not think this very likely, but, all the same, he replied that it was a great pity.

“Do you now,” he said, “I have never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Tinker in society. She doesn’t go out much. I fancy. Would you mind——?”

“Certainly, Mr. Wimpenny, if you wish it. See, she is resting now and fanning herself with that outlandish hat of hers. Shall we join her?” And presently the diplomatic Wimpenny was making a somewhat exaggerated bow before the heiress of Wilberlee.

And Tom’s eyes followed the graceful girl as she walked by the side of Nehemiah, chatting gaily and seeming well content with his companionship; and Tom plunged his hands deep into his pockets and stalked moodily with clouded brow about the field, deaf to every entreaty from tempting lips to “choose the girl that he loved best,” and feeling that for him life had lost its zest. The blue of the sky was dulled, the music of the lark soaring in the azure might have been the cawing of the rooks, and the gentle summer breeze that scarce stirred the leaves an icy blast from eastern shores.

“What a fool I am, crying for the moon. I, Tom Pinder, apprentice to Jabez Tinker, Esquire and Justice of the Peace. Go to yonder rosy faced weaver with sparkling eyes and towzled hair. She will lend a ready ear, you can send her home to-night, her heart in a tumult of delight; in her dreams heaven will open to her, and she will wake with your name upon her lips. Or go down yonder to the Clothiers’ Arms. There are some jolly fellows there, and you will be all the more welcome because you have been set down as a strait-laced, sour-faced curmudgeon with lead in your veins for blood. Go drink with them and join in their drunken chorus; better that than eat your heart out after fruit that is not for you.”

And so with head down-bent he makes for where he had left Hannah and Lucy; and in his abstraction nearly walks into Wimpenny and Dorothy. Mrs. Jones had remembered the wise saying that two are company and three are none.

“Mind where you’re walking, will you?” exclaimed Wimpenny, cut short in a very flowery compliment which Dorothy was perhaps not sorry to have curtailed.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Tinker, I’m afraid I was very careless. I did not see. I was thinking.”

“Now that is not a very gallant speech, Tom—I mean Mr. Pinder. Mr. Wimpenny would have assured me that he never thought at all except of me, and that he would have divined my presence by instinct a mile off.”

But Wimpenny was not to be rallied into good humour. He had put on a very tight-fitting pair of patent-leather shoes, and he suffered from the usual infliction of those who wear tight boots,—and Tom had grazed his foot.

“Mr. Pinder! indeed,” he thought, “why, damme, it’s one of old Tinker’s mill hands.”

Now Tom, having made his apologies to Dorothy, was for pursuing the tenor of his way, being by no means disposed to offer any to Mr. Wimpenny.

“Oh, you mustn’t go, Mr. Pinder, you must take me to Lucy; but first you must help me to gather some flowers. You know Paris so well, Mr. Wimpenny, and must excuse my accent. Shall I say Au revoir or A bientôt, and without waiting for a reply she turned in the direction of the garden at the house, Leaving Nehemiah dumbfounded.

“Curse the jade,” he muttered to himself, “chucked over for a dirty weaver, by Jove. But I’ll be even with her yet. It doesn’t do to play tricks with Miss Dorothy, and so you’ll find some day. But I can bide my time. I’ll go and have a drink at the Crown, Polly ’ll be glad to see me anyhow.”

And Tom walked as in a dream. The sky was blue again, and the lark trilled a clearer note, and all the earth was glad in its summer joyousness.

CHAPTER X

IT is one thing for a maiden to invite a young man to a garden, and quite another to know what to do with him when she gets him there. It would have puzzled Dorothy to say exactly why she had asked Tom Pinder to help her cull flowers. The ostensible pretext given had been the gathering of a bouquet for Lucy; but we all know that a woman’s ostensible pretexts are—well, ostensible pretexts. For one thing Dorothy had had enough of Nehemiah Wimpenny, and wanted to be decently free of him for the rest of the day. She had wearied of the mild pleasure of poking fun at his French. But in truth Dorothy had acted from impulse and regretted her words all the more when she saw the sudden light of glad surprise that sprung to Tom’s dark eyes. But there is safety in numbers, reflected Dorothy. The back door of the house was not locked. Dorothy looked into the kitchen, into the parlour,—neither Betty nor Peggy was there. She called their names at the bottom of the staircase, whilst Tom bided in the garden, but there was no answering cry from Betty or from Peggy, those handmaidens having very properly conceived that Whitsuntide comes alike for bond and free, and betaken themselves, in gay attire, to the delights of the field. Peggy, at this moment, indeed, was flying, with fleet foot, from the outstretched arms of an amorous young butcher, who ’livered the daily joint at Wilberlee, and the staider Betty was listening with all too ready ears to the somewhat halting wooing of the village constable, who, even in plain clothes, was still a proper man and had, perhaps, a prophetic vision of a village-inn with himself as keeper of order and the purse-strings, and Betty as buxom but bustling hostess.

“It is very tiresome,” said Dorothy, as she returned to the garden where Tom was pretending to be wrapt in the contemplation of the beauties of a Gloire de Dijon, “I did so want a cup of tea, but Betty and Peggy have played me truant. Don’t you think, Mr. Pinder, you had better go find them, and say I want one of them, no matter which, very particularly.”

But Tom had taken possession of the handbasket and the scissors, and was oblivious to hints.

“Some of these blooms want cutting very badly,” was his only answer, “they will fall in another day.” Then there was silence save for the clicking of the scissors, the humming of the bees, the good-night song of the birds, and the laughter and cries from the field. Unconsciously, as the basket filled, the steps of Dorothy had turned the gable of the house. The merry crowd was hid from view. The garden here sloped to the river side, and by its brim was a rustic seat. Dorothy sank upon it weariedly.

“I confess I’m tired,” she exclaimed “I seem to have been on my feet for a week,” and she put out the tiniest point of a shoe-toe and contemplated it ruefully. “Now, what do you mean, Mr. Pinder, standing there swinging that basket like one of those boats in a fair that make you dizzy to look at them? Can’t you find a seat somewhere?”

Tom looked all around. He might have found a seat by climbing on the branch of an adjacent tree. Some such thought may have crossed his mind, for by that magic of association that passes the wit of man came to him the couplet that he had read long ago:

with its answering

Tom did not climb. He sat instead on the edge of the garden seat, as far from Dorothy as space permitted.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘Mr. Pinder’,” he said. “I never feel quite sure you are not making mock of me.”

Dorothy had taken a rose from the basket and was looking for leaves to bind it with.

“Well you see, you are getting rather too big for me to call you Tom. And besides, you are a man now, and besides, oh!—lots of things.”

This did not seem very lucid. Tom went on:

“I was never called ‘Mr. Pinder’ in my life till you called me so. Then I was very glad and very proud. It put new thoughts into my mind. It was like a ‘new birth,’ as the chapel-folk might say. But it has done its work now, and I should like once more to be plain ‘Tom’ to you.”

“Well, plain Tom then be it, if that will please you; but we really must be going, or we shall miss Lucy. Hark! many of the people must have left the ground already. I can hear them talking as they go past the mill. Bring along the basket, Tom, and don’t spill more than you can help.”

“I don’t think I should take the flowers to Lucy in the field. People would say you favoured Lucy more than other folk’s children.”

“And what do I care what people say; I do like Lucy more than any other girl in the village.”

“I was not exactly thinking of what you might care about miss. I was thinking more of what Lucy would feel.”

“Oh! Of course,” said Dorothy, not without a suspicion of pettishness in her tone. Really, this young man was too frank. To say exactly what one thinks is no doubt commendable in the abstract. But then we should be careful to think only what will fall pleasingly on the ear, if we wish to please. “Oh! of course,” said Dorothy.

Tom felt he had blundered. “The air comes very sweet and fresh from the hills” he said, to change the subject. “How clear the stream looks to-night and how softly it warbles over the stones.”

“Yes,” assented Dorothy, “I love the river when its waters are crystal as now; but you know it is so seldom we see it so bright and sparkling. The dye-water from the mill makes it all the colours of the rainbow, but you take care the colours are dirty enough.”

“There’s something I wanted to tell you, Miss Dorothy,” said Tom, after a lull in the conversation which both felt to be embarrassing.

“Well?”

“You see, Miss Dorothy, I shall be of age soon.”

“Really! Well that seems to me a thing you need not look so solemn about. It happens to everyone, more or less, if they live long enough. I shall be of age myself someday, I dare say, but I will try to bear it submissively, if not cheerfully. You’ll get over it, Tom. You may even in time get used to it.”

“Yes, but it will make a great difference to me. For one thing my apprenticeship to your uncle will be at an end.”

“Oh!” said Dorothy, “Well, I should think you’ll be glad of that. Uncle is sure to want you to stop on at the mill—I know he thinks well of you.”

“It is very good of him” said Tom and smiled as he thought of the day when his master had lifted his riding whip in quick, passionate anger. But that was long gone bye. “But I don’t think I shall stop on, in fact I’m sure I shan’t.”

“You won’t leave Holmfirth, will you, Tom?” and she was surprised at the interest with which she awaited his reply.

“You see,” said Tom, slowly, and colouring as if he were confessing to a crime “I’ve had a bit of money left and Ben and me, that is Ben and I.”

“Oh! bother the grammar” cried Dorothy.

“Ben and me’s going into partnership, and there’s a little mill at Hinchliffe Mill where we can get room and power. Higher up the river, you know. We will try not to send you more dye-water down stream than we can help. I shall always think when I draw the plugs that the water will pass your window, Miss Dorothy.” Tom was distinctly improving.

“It’s a great venture,” said Dorothy gravely. “A very great venture. I don’t mean so much for you, you have all life before you, but for Ben, and what hurts Ben will hurt Lucy. You see other people besides you can think of Lucy.” Now there was a piece of malice here, but Dorothy thought she could now cry quits.

“Yes, it’s a venture, Miss Dorothy, a great venture. It is one that perhaps would never have been made if you had never called me ‘Mr. Pinder,’ so don’t throw cold water on our scheme. But it isn’t just that I wanted to talk about. There’s something more.”

“’Pon my word, Tom, you’re worse than the brook. The teachers have come and the teachers have gone, but you go on for ever. But in for a penny, in for a pound. What more is there?”

“Well, Ben and I have talked it over and over. Don’t think me a Pharisee, Miss Dorothy, but we’re going to try to run the mill on new lines.”

“H’m; that sounds like adding venture to venture, doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps: you see, Ben and I both belong to the working class.”

Dorothy bent her head in a somewhat hesitating assent. “I suppose so,” she said.

“And we know something of what working folk have to put up with, how hard they have to work, and how little they often get in return.”

“Come to that,” said Dorothy, “I dare say a masters’ lot isn’t quite a bed of roses. You’ll find that out soon enough for yourselves I’m afraid.”

“Granted,” said Tom, ”but fat sorrow’s better than lean; but I don’t mean to be a master.”

Dorothy rose. “It is later than I thought. Betty must have come in by this, or Peggy. And the field’s well-nigh deserted. Whit-Monday’s come and gone, Tom, and I must e’en go too. You must take the flowers home to Lucy, and give her my love. Say I will call for the basket some fine day.”

But Tom ventured to touch her arm as she made as though to go. “Nay, Miss Dorothy, I would I might say my say—but, perhaps, you don’t care to know our plans?”—this wistfully.

“Oh! but indeed I do. Just five minutes then. And indeed it is vastly pleasanter here than indoors. No more romping for me this day,” and Dorothy sat down again.

“I said just now I did not mean to be a master, Ben and I are indeed going to add venture to venture. You know something about co-operation?”

“Why, what a question! Of course I do. Doesn’t Mr. Thorpe tell us every time he comes to see my aunt that the Co-op’s ruining him—and serve him right, Betty says. Aunt says that things at the Co-op are nasty without being cheap, for what they give you in ‘divvy’—isn’t that the word?—they take out in quality. I hope you’re not going to start a Co-op, Tom. I really cannot fancy you in a white apron, simpering over a counter and asking me ‘what’s the next article, miss?’”

“Then you would give us your custom?” he asked with a smile.

“Oh! Perhaps I might sneak in occasionally for a trifle—for Lucy’s sake, you know.”

“But you forget, I told you we had taken part of a mill at Hinchliffe Mill. It’s there we’re going to have our Co-op.”

“Isn’t it rather out of the way? Fancy, having to send all that way for a pound of candles. Oh! I beg Ben’s pardon; there’ll be no need of candles with such a luminary as he in the shops. You’ll be selling philosophy by the yard and theology by the stone. But seriously, Tom, I don’t see what a Co-op has to do with a mill.”

“And that’s just what I want to speak to you about. You see Ben’s a Socialist, and all his life he has been crying out against capitalists and capital. Now he declares I want to turn him into a capitalist for we are to be partners in this venture upon a venture.”

Dorothy shook her head. “I’m just as much in the fog now as ever,” she said, “I see if I want to know anything about this wonderful new departure I must ask Lucy. Do get on; you and your Co-op that isn’t a Co-op after all. But you will not be a very bloated capitalist, will you, Tom?” she concluded mischievously.

“We aren’t going to be capitalists at all. I’m just going to start the concern with my bit of a fortune—it doesn’t look so much of a fortune as it did, now I know what a little way it will go. But any way Ben and I are going to work in it, side by side with the hands. We are all going to be hands together. Of course, in a sense, there’ll be a master; but he will be a master in a different sense from what we’re all used to. Every one of us that can do a full man’s work is to have an equal share in the profit, always provided he does the work he is capable of. There will be shorter hours and less work for the youngsters. But the share of all will depend on the profits we make, and no one is to have a greater share than another.”

“But that seems ridiculous, Tom. If you are to turn manufacturer like my uncle, why, you must be a manufacturer. You will have to go to market as he does, and meet and bargain with your customers, to dress like them, to mix with them as an equal. How can you do that on the lines you are laying down? I am only a silly girl, may be, and certainly I don’t know much about business, but go on,—this grows interesting.”

“I know the difficulties, Miss Dorothy, but the difficulty will not be in Ben, and I hope not in me. The difficulty will be in getting a sufficient number of men, capable, reliable, sober, industrious men who can be brought to see that in our scheme there will not only be an escape from the thraldom of the capital they denounce so hotly, but a realization of that equality and fraternity for which men and women have gone to their graves like bed. The difficulty will be to persuade men not merely that they will be better off themselves, but that they must be content to take part of their wage in seeing a worse workman than themselves better off too. Labour is just as selfish as capital. But in our mill no matter what a man’s allotted task, so long as he does his work faithfully, he shall share and share alike.”

“But that seems just a little absurd, don’t you think?” asked Dorothy, now genuinely interested. “You must make all this clear to me. You don’t mean to say that if you, say, are the designer or the traveller, you are to draw no more profit out of the concern than a teamer?”

“That’s it, exactly—not a stiver. We’re all to be partners together. We’ll know neither master nor man at our mill. We’re going to try an experiment in grim earnest, and oh! Miss Dorothy, for heaven’s sake, don’t shake your head and look so glum about it. I feel sure we can succeed. We will succeed. I am young and there is no hardship, no sacrifice, no work for which I am not prepared. Perhaps I might get a situation under another; perhaps in time I might start on the usual lines and perhaps in time I might make a fortune for myself. But will it not be a grander thing and in itself a better, a more heart-satisfying future should we be able to gather round ourselves a band of workers, all knit together not merely by the selfish bonds of personal interest, but each rejoicing that he is advancing, too, his brother’s welfare, and that in his well-being and in his well-doing each and everyone of us is concerned.”

Tom had risen in the earnestness of his soul’s unburthening, and now paced the narrow strip of gravelled garden path which skirted the river-bank. His eyes were lit with unwonted fire, a flush was on his cheek, his voice gained strength and cadence as the long-pondered thoughts forced themselves to utterance, and the natural unstudied motions of his hands kept harmony with the spoken word.

“Oh! Miss Dorothy, it may all be a dream, but if a dream it be, surely it is such a one as was dreamed by the Lake of Galilee or the slopes of Olive’s Mount. Is it not meet that old men in the time to come should dream dreams, and the young men see visions. Had Ben Garside, good, staunch, true man that I know him to be, had not he dreamed dreams and seen visions could he have had it in his heart to strive and suffer as I know he did, not for himself but for the oppressed ones of his class. And shall not we of a newer time have our visions, and mine is of a glad day when the band of man shall be against his neighbour, when this unresting, cruel strife of brother seeking to outvie his brother, building ever the fabric of his success upon the undoing of another shall cease from the land, and the Kingdom of which seers have dreamed and prophets foretold shall be indeed at hand.”

Dorothy gazed in wrapt regard at the young enthusiast. She drank in the music of his words with greedy ears, and they sank into her soul. Never had man so spoken to her before. Words like these, if spoken at all, were not, in her experience, words for every day life. They should be reserved to be voiced on Sunday from the pulpit and devoutly ignored and disregarded on the Monday. But as the unpent stream of cherished conviction flowed its impetuous course Dorothy felt that she too was being swept with it, and forgot that she was the daughter of a proud and exclusive race, and he who paced before her with rapid, agitated stride, the humblest of her guardian’s henchmen.

But withal Dorothy was a practical common-sense young woman, and as little likely as any of her very practical sex to forget the stern necessities of work-a-day life, in a momentary abandon to the transcendental schemes of an enthusiast.

“Don’t you think we had better know more about your Co-op?” she said. “These grand ideas may be all very well as abstract theories. I want to know how you propose to put them into practice and live. I seem to remember that St. John not only permits dreams and visions to you men; he also allows us daughters to prophesy.”

“Well?”

“Now I venture to prophesy that if you and Ben set about your new venture in the manner you seem to have contemplated, it is not only good-bye to your small fortune, which, perhaps wouldn’t matter very much—but it would be to handicap you at the very threshold of your life with the deadening sense of failure, and perhaps fill your whole future with the bitterness of blighted hopes and unrealized aspirations. Now I think I can suggest to you an attainable Utopia. It would not, perhaps, be such a neck-or-nothing affair as yours, but it should have enough of other-worldliness in it for a sane man.”

Tom sat down again by Dorothy’s side, but this time he did not take the edge of the seat. His nervous shyness had vanished in the abandonment of his speech.

“Ben says women can neither see nor feel an inch outside their own doorsteps,” he said with a smile.

“And a good thing for men, whose wives at all events are centred in their homes and families. But I am not Ben’s wife, nor—nor anyone else’s,” concluded Dorothy lamely, flushing slightly at some unspoken thought.

“And what is your attainable Utopia, Miss Dorothy?” asked Tom, very quietly.

“Well, you must let me think, and, as it were, feel my way to a conclusion; for to tell the truth I have not read or thought much on such difficult problems as the subject seems to bristle with. Tell me, at our village Co-op doesn’t a member’s dividend depend on the amount of his purchases?”

“I believe so.”

“And, roughly speaking, doesn’t a man’s spending power bear a sort of proportion to his earning power?”

“Practically, no doubt.”

“Then you see that practical co-operation benefits a man according to his ability and application.”

“Clearly.”

“Well, I think that is right. Now if I understand your principle of Socialism it makes no distinction between the skilled and incapable. Granting only equality of industry you reward all alike. Now that is not common justice.”

“I think it is,” said Tom, stoutly, “a man can but do his best.”

“All the same, it isn’t. Take the case of a man, a designer, say, in a mill, or a lawyer, or a doctor. He devotes money, time, and the hard sweating of his brains to becoming master of his calling. Whilst he is studying he is earning just nothing at all, in fact less than nothing. When he is qualified for it he rightly expects to be better paid than a man who knows how to handle a spade or pickaxe when his life of toil begins, and knows just as much and no more when his life ends in the workhouse or the grave.”

“You say ‘rightly expects,’ why rightly?” asked Tom.

“Because when the skilled and educated labourer in whatever sphere you like does begin to be paid it is common justice that he should be paid, not merely for the present years of harvest, but also for the years of seeding, cultivation, and growth. It is merely the analogy of the farmer. It simply means that the toil of preparation is paid for at a later day. It is payment deferred, but none the less payment of what is justly due. Now your navvy or artisan gets his payment from the first day he touches the mattock or throws a shuttle.”

“There seems some justice in what say, Miss Dorothy; but I thought you were going to show me the way to your attainable Utopia.”

“So I am. I should imagine that the current rate of wages is very much the measure of a man’s comparative worth in this life-absorbing soul-cramping pursuit of wealth you call business. When these are paid and other outlays deducted, there remains, or doesn’t remain sometimes, what the capitalist calls his profit?”

Tom nodded.

“And it is against this profit your sensitive soul rebels, your dainty fingers will not touch?”

“If it pleases you to put it so, Miss Dorothy.”

“Then quell your soul’s rebellion, let not your fingers touch. Distribute your profit among all the workers in the concern, yourself and Ben included, for I suppose your stomach will insist on its elemental right to be filled; but distribute to each a share of the profits proportioned to his wage. For taking it that a man’s wage is a rough and ready measure of a man’s share in building up the wealth, so, too, would it be a rough and ready method of determine your share in the profits. And now most potent, grave, and reverend seigneur, thy hand-maiden hath spoken, and lud-ha’-mercy, ’tis sick to death I am of long faces and your miserable economics. Did ever before a young man lure a maiden to flowery bower and discourse to her sweet—political economy! I warrant you have smoother sayings for Lucy’s ear. And, now, good-night. I heard Betty shouting for me down the paddock this quarter gone. Don’t forget my love to Lucy.”

And Dorothy tripped away, and Tom made homewards, carrying the basket very tenderly; but the rose that Dorothy had toyed with and cast aside he picked up, pressed to his lips and hid in his pocket-book. Someone found its yellow leaves years afterwards, and made-believe to be jealous because of them.

“Law! Betty,” said Dorothy that night, as she uncoiled the tresses of her gleaming locks. “I declare your Tom Pinder is as mad as a hatter; and faith, I think it’s catching.”

“Smittling, yo’ meean, miss. Well, some ailments be if yo’ bide very near them as has ’em.”

And Ben and Tom sat long that night talking over their plans for the near future. Ben conceded there was something in what Miss Dorothy had said.

“By gow, who’d ha’ thowt yon’ wench had it in her, to pounce reet daan on th’ weak spot, what yo’ may ca’ th’ flaw o’th system, all in a jeffy like. But she’s a head piece in a hundred. It’ll be her uncle ’oo favvers, for her father had more heart nor yead.”

“An’ what for should’nt Dorothy see what yo’ two men blinked yo’r een at?” asked Hannah indignantly, “Haven’t aw towd yo’ scores o’ times ’at a woman ’ll lawp ovver a wall whilst a man’s gooin’ raand gropin’ for th’ gate. Aw’m fain someb’dy can ding sense into oather on yo’—it doesn’t matter which, for what one on yo’ says t’other ’ll swear to. If ’oo’s persuaded Tom theer ’at ther’s sich a thing as lookin’ after other folks consarns till yo’r own’s gone to rack an’ ruin, it’s more nor e’er aw could do bi thee, Ben. Happen aw’d ha’ had more chance if aw’d tried afore we were wed i’stead o’ after, but ther’s no tellin’. Some folk are born so; an’ ther ne’er wer’ a fooil brought into th’ world but there wer’ a bigger born to match him. But aw see hah it is, we’st burn more can’les talkin’ abaat th’ new venture, as yo ca’ it, nor th’ takkin’s ’ll run to i’ a gooid season. Get thee to bed, Tom, an’ dunnot yo’ forget yo’re Jabez Tinker’s ’prentice lad yet, whativver yo’ may be some day when me an’ Ben’s both under th’ sod.”