Months passed, and Robert still worked on the pithead. Much of the novelty had passed, and he was accustomed to the noise and clamor, though he never lost the feeling that he was working with, or, indeed, was part of, some giant monster, imprisoned and harnessed, it is true, but capable of titanic labors and fall of unexpectedness. It was ever-present, implacable and sinister, yet so long as its fetters held, easily controlled.
The warm weather had come, and the lure of the moors called to him at his work. Away out over there--somewhere--there were strange wonders awaiting him. He watched the trains, long, fast, and so inevitable-looking, rushing across the moor about a mile and a half from where he worked, and often, he thought that perhaps some day one of those flying monsters would bear him away from Lowwood across the moors into the Big City. What was a city like? And the sea? How big would it be? It was a staggering thought to imagine a stretch of water that ended on the sky-line--no land to be seen on the other side! What a wonderful world it must be!
But a touch of bitterness was creeping into his character, and for this his mother's teaching was responsible. Nellie was always jealous of the welfare of the working class, and was ever vigilant as to its interests. She did not know how matters could be rectified, but she did know that she and her like suffered unnecessarily.
"There's no reason," she would say, "for decent folk bein' in poverty. Look at the conditions that puir folk live in!"
"Hoot ay! Nellie, but we canna' help it," a neighbor would reply. "It's no' for us to be better."
"What way is it no'?" she would demand indignantly. "Do you think we couldna' be better folk if we had no poverty?"
"Ay, but the like o' us ken no better, an' it wadna' do if we had mair. We micht waste it," and the tone of resignation always maddened her to greater wrath.
"There's mair wasted on fancy fal-lals among the gentry than wad keep many a braw family goin'. Look at the hooses we live in; the gentry wadna' keep their dogs in them. The auld Earl has better stables for his horses than the hooses puir folk live in!"
"That's maybe a' richt, Nellie, but you maun mind that we're no' gentry. We havena' been brocht up to anything else. Somebody has got to work, an' we canna' help it," and the fatalistic resignation but added fuel to her anger.