“That goes without saying but you don’t mind it, do you, mother?”
“Well, your father took me on a sudden. I hedn’t time to think before I spoke and when my heart gets busy, good-by to my head.”
“Mrs. Courtney has not been here for a long time.”
“She is a good deal away but I saw her in London last year every now and then. She is a careless woman; she goes it blind about everything, and yet she wants to be at the bottom of all county affairs.”
“Mother, could we not do a little shopping today?”
“At the fag end of the week? What are you talking about? Certainly not. Besides, thy father is worried about the meeting this afternoon. He says more may come of it than we can dream of.”
“Why, Katherine, it might end in a factory here, or it might end in the weavers heving to leave Annis and go elsewhere.”
“Cannot they get work of some other kind, in, or near by Annis?”
“Nay, tha surely knows, that a weaver hes to keep his fingers soft, and his hands supple. Hard manual work would spoil his hands forever for the loom, and our men are born weavers. They doan’t fashion to any other work, and to be sure England hes to hev her weavers.”
“Mother, would it not be far better to have a factory? Lately, when I have taken a walk with father he always goes to the wold and looks all round considering just like a man who was wondering about a site for a building. It would be a good thing for us, mother, would it not?”
“It seems so, but father does not want it. He says it will turn Annis into a rough village, full of strangers, with bad ways, and also that it will spoil the whole country-side with its smoke and dirt.”
“Thy father got a thousand pounds this morning. If he does not put most of it into a factory, he will put it into bread, which will be eaten to-day and wanted again to-morrow. That would make short work of a thousand pounds.”
“I doan’t need to. Father seems an easy-going man but he thinks of iverything; and when he _hes_ to act no one strikes the iron quicker and harder. If thou saw him in London, if thou heard him in the House, brow-beating the Whigs and standing up for Peel and Wellington and others, thou would wonder however thou dared to tease, and contradict, and coax him in Annis. Thou would that! Now I am going to the lower summer house for an hour. Send away thy letters, and let me alone a bit.”