Daniel Ironsyde sat with his Aunt Jenny after dinner and voiced discontent.  But it was not with himself and his personal progress that he felt out of tune.  All went well at the Mill save in one particular, and he found no fault either with the heads of the offices at Bridport, or with John Best, who entirely controlled the manufacture at Bridetown.  His brother caused the tribulation of his mind.

Miss Ironsyde sympathised, but argued for Raymond.

“He has an immense respect for you and would not willingly do anything to annoy you, I’m sure of that.  You must remember that Raymond was not schooled to this.  It takes a boy of his temperament a long time to find the yoke easy.  You were naturally studious, and wise enough to get into harness after you left school; Raymond, with his extraordinary physical powers, found the fascination of sport over-mastering.  He has had to give up what to your better understanding is trivial and unimportant, but it really meant something to him.”

“He hasn’t given up as much as you might think,” answered Daniel.  “He’s always taking holidays now for cricket matches, and he rides often with Waldron.  It was a mistake his going there.  Waldron is a person with one idea, and a foolish idea at that.  He only thinks a man is a man when he’s tearing about after foxes, or killing something, or playing with a ball of some sort.  He’s a bad influence for Raymond.  But it’s not that.  It’s not so much what Raymond doesn’t do as what he does do.  He’s foolish with the spinners and minders at the Mill.”

“He might be,” said Jenny Ironsyde, “but he’s a gentleman.”

“He’s an idiot.  I believe he’d wreck the whole business if he had the power.  Best tells me he talks to the girls about what he’s going to do presently, and tells them he will raise all their wages.  He suggests to perfectly satisfied people that they are not getting enough money!  Well, it’s only human nature for them to agree with him, and you can easily see what the result of that would be.  Instead of having the hands willing and contented, they’ll grow unsettled and grumble, and then work will suffer and a bad spirit appear in the Mill.  It is simply insane.”

“I quite agree,” answered his aunt.  “There’s no excuse whatever for nonsense of that sort, and if Raymond minded his own business, as he should, it couldn’t happen.  Surely his own work doesn’t throw him into the company of the girls?”

“Of course it doesn’t.  It’s simply a silly excuse to waste his time and hear his own voice.  He ought to have learned all about the mechanical part weeks ago.”

“Well, I can only advise patience,” said Miss Ironsyde.  “I don’t suppose a woman would carry much weight with him, an old one I mean myself in fact.  But failing others I will do what I can.  You say Mr. Waldron’s no good.  Then try Uncle Ernest.  I think he might touch Raymond.  He’s gentle, but he’s wise.  And failing that, you must tackle him yourself, Daniel.  It’s your duty.  I know you hate preaching and all that sort of thing, but there’s nobody else.”

“I suppose there isn’t.  It can’t go on anyway, because he’ll do harm.  I believe asses like Raymond make more trouble than right down wicked people, Aunt Jenny.”

“Don’t tell him he’s an ass.  Be patient you’re wonderfully patient always for such a young man, so be patient with your brother.  But try Uncle Ernest first.  He might ask Raymond to lunch, or tea, and give him a serious talking to.  He’ll know what to say.”

“He’s too mild and easy.  It will go in at one ear and come out of the other,” prophesied Daniel.

But none the less he called on Mr. Churchouse when next at Bridetown.

The old man had just received a parcel by post and was elated.

“A most interesting work sent to me from ‘A Well Wisher,’” he said.  “It is an old perambulation of Dorsetshire, which I have long desired to possess.”

“People like your writings in the Bridport Gazette,” declared Daniel.  “Can you give me a few minutes, Uncle Ernest?  I won’t keep you.”

“My time is always at the service of Henry Ironsyde’s boys,” answered the other, “and nothing that I can do for you, or Raymond, is a trouble.”

“Thank you.  I’m grateful.  It is about Raymond, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah, I’m not altogether surprised.  Come into the study.”

Mr. Churchouse, carrying his new book, led the way and soon he heard of the younger man’s anxieties.  But the bookworm increased rather than allayed them.

“Do you see anything of Raymond?” began Daniel.

“A great deal of him.  He often comes to supper.  But I will be frank.  He does not patronise my simple board for what he can get there, nor does he find my company very exciting.  He wouldn’t.  The attraction, I’m afraid, is my housekeeper’s daughter, Sabina.  Sabina, I may tell you, is a very attractive girl, Daniel.  It has been my pleasure during her youth to assist at her education, and she is well informed and naturally clever.  She is inclined to be excitable, as many clever people are, but she is of a charming disposition and has great natural ability.  I had thought she would very likely become a schoolmistress; but in this place the call of the mills is paramount and, as you know, the young women generally follow their mothers.  So Sabina found the thought of the spinning attractive and is now, Mr. Best tells me, an amazingly clever spinner his very first in fact.  And it cannot be denied that Raymond sees a good deal of her.  This is probably not wise, because friendship, at their tender ages, will often run into emotion, and, naturally flattered by his ingenuous attentions, Sabina might permit herself to spin dreams and so lessen her activities as a spinner of yarn.  I say she might.  These things mean more to a girl than a boy.”

“What can I do about it?  I was going to ask you to talk sense to Raymond.”

“With all the will, I am not the man, I fear.  Sense varies so much from the standpoint of the observer, my dear Daniel.  You, for example, having an old head on young shoulders, would find yourself in agreement with my sentiments; Raymond, having a young and rather empty head on his magnificent shoulders, would not.  I take the situation to be this.  Raymond’s life has been suddenly changed and his prodigious physical activities reduced.  He bursts with life.  He is more alive than any youth I have ever known.  Now all this exuberance of nature must have an outlet, and what more natural than that, in the presence of such an attractive young woman, the sex instinct should begin to assert itself?”

“You don’t mean he is in love, or anything like that?”

“That is just exactly what I do mean,” answered Mr. Churchouse.

“I thought he probably liked to chatter to them all, and hear his own voice, and talk rubbish about what he’ll do for them in the future.”

“He has nebulous ideas about wages and so on; but women are quicker than men, and probably they understand perfectly well that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about so far as that goes.  How would it be if you took him into the office at Bridport, where he would be more under your eye?”

“He must learn the business first and nobody can teach him like Best.”

“Then I advise that you talk to him yourself.  Don’t let the fact that you are only a year and three months older than Raymond make you too tolerant.  You are really ten, or twenty, years older than he is in certain directions, and you must lecture him accordingly.  Be firm; be decisive.  Explain to him that life is real and that he must approach it with the same degree of earnestness and self-discipline as he devotes to running and playing games and the like.  I feel sure you will carry great weight.  He is far from being a fool.  In fact he is a very intelligent young man with excellent brains, and if he would devote them to the business, you would soon find him your right hand.  The machinery does honestly interest him.  But you must make it a personal thing.  He must study political economy and the value of labour and its relations to capital and the market value of dry spun yarns.  These vague ideas to better the lot of the working classes are wholly admirable and speak of a good heart.  But you must get him to listen to reason and the laws of supply and demand and so forth.”

“What shall I say about the girls?”

“It is not so much the girls as the girl.  If he had manifested a general interest in them, you need have said nothing; but, with the purest good will to Raymond and a great personal affection for Sabina, I do feel that this friendship is not desirable.  Don’t think I am cynical and worldly and take too low a view of human nature far from it, my dear boy.  Nothing would ever make me take a low view of human nature.  But one has not lived for sixty years with one’s eyes shut.  Unhappy things occur and Nature is especially dangerous when you find her busy with such natural creatures as your brother and Sabina.  A word to the wise.  I would speak, but you will do so with far greater weight.”

“I hate preaching and making Raymond think I’m a prig and all that sort of thing.  It only hardens him against me.”

“He knows better.  At any rate try persuasion.  He has a remarkably good temper and a child could lead him.  In fact a child sometimes does.  He’d do anything for Waldron’s little girl.  Just say you admire and share his ambitions for the welfare of the workers.  Hint at supply and demand; then explain that all must go according to fixed laws, and amelioration is a question of time and combination, and so on.  Then tackle him fearlessly about Sabina and appeal to his highest instincts.  I, too, in my diplomatic way will approach him with modern instances.  Unfortunately it is only too easy to find modern instances of what romance may end in.  And to say that modern instances are exceedingly like ancient ones, is merely to say, that human nature doesn’t change.”

Fired by this advice, Daniel went straight to the works, and it was about eleven o’clock in the day when he entered his brother’s office above the Mill to find it empty.

Descending to the main shop, he discovered Raymond showing a visitor round the machines.  Little Estelle Waldron was paying her first visit to the spinners and, delighted at the distraction, Raymond, on whose invitation she had come, displayed all the operation of turning flax and hemp into yarn.  He aired his knowledge, but it was incomplete and he referred constantly to the operators from stage to stage.

Round-eyed and attentive, Estelle poured her whole heart and soul into the business.  She showed a quick perception and asked questions that interested the girls.  Some, indeed, they could not answer.  Estelle’s mind approached their work from a new angle and saw in it mysteries and points calling for solution that had never challenged them.  Neither had her problems much struck Raymond, but he saw their force when she raised them and pronounced them most important.

“Why, that’s fundamental, really,” he said, “and yet, be shot, if I ever thought of it!  Only Best will know and I shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t.”

They stood at the First Drawing Frame when Daniel appeared.  They had followed the flat ribbon of sliver from the Carding Machine.  At the Drawing Frame six ribbons from the Carder were all brought together into one ribbon and so gained in quality, while losing more impurities during a second severe process of combing out.

“And even now it’s not ready for spinning,” explained Raymond.  “Now it goes on to the Second Drawing Frame, and four of these ribbons from the First Drawer are brought together into one ribbon again.  So you see that no less than twenty-four ribbons from the Carder are brought together to make stuff good enough to spin.”

“What do the Drawing Frames do to it?” asked Estelle; “it looks just the same.”

“Blessed if I know,” confessed Raymond.  “What do they do to it, Mrs. Chick?”

A venerable old woman, whose simple task was to wind away the flowing sliver into cans, made answer.  She was clad in a dun overall and had a dim scarlet cap of worsted drawn over her white hair.  The remains of beauty homed in her brown and wrinkled face; her grey eyes were gentle, and her expression wistful and kindly.

“The Drawing Heads level the ‘sliver,’ and true it, and make it good,” she said.  “All the rubbish is dragged out on the teeth and now, though it seems thinner and weaker, it isn’t really.  Now it goes to the Roving Frame and that makes it still better and ready for the spinners.”

Then came Daniel, and Raymond, leaving Estelle with Mrs. Chick, departed at his brother’s wish.  The younger anticipated trouble and began to excuse himself.

“Waldron’s so jolly friendly that I thought you wouldn’t mind if I showed his little girl round the works.  She’s tremendously clever and intelligent.”

“Of course I don’t mind.  That’s nothing, but I want to speak to you on the general question.  I do wish, Raymond, you’d be more dignified.”

“Dignified!  Me?  Good Lord!”

“Well, if you don’t like that word, say ‘self-respecting.’  You might take longer views and look ahead.”

“You may bet your boots I do that, Dan.  This life isn’t so delightful that I am content to live in the present hour, I assure you.  I look ahead all right.”

“I mean look ahead for the sake of the business, not for your own sake.  I don’t want to preach, or any nonsense of that kind; but there’s nobody else to speak, so I must.  The point is that you don’t see in the least what you are doing here.  In the future my idea was and yours, too, I suppose that you came into the business as joint partner with me in everything.”

“Jolly sporting of you, Dan.”

“But that being so, can’t you see you ought to support me in everything?”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t.  You’re not taking the right line in the least, and what’s more, I believe you know it yourself.  Don’t think I’m selfish and careless about our people, or indifferent to their needs and rights.  I’m quite as keen about their welfare as you are; but one can’t do everything in a moment.  And you’re not helping them and only hindering me by talking a lot of rubbish to them.”

“It isn’t rubbish, Dan.  I had all the facts from Levi Baggs, the hackler.  He understands the claims of capital and what labour is entitled to, and all the rest of it.”

“Baggs is a sour, one-sided man and will only give you a biased and wrong view.  If you want to know the truth, you can come into Bridport and study it.  Then you’ll see exactly what things are worth, and what we get paid in open market for our goods.  All you do by listening to Levi is to waste your time and waste his.  And then you wander about among the women talking nonsense.  And remember this:  they know it’s nonsense.  They understand the question very much better than you do, and instead of respecting you, as they ought to respect a future master, they only laugh at you behind your back.  And what will the result be?  Why, when you come to have a voice in the thing, they’ll remind you of all your big talk.  And then you’ve got to climb down and they’ll not respect you, or take you seriously.”

“All right, old chap enough said.  Only you needn’t think the people wouldn’t respect me.  I get on jolly well with them as a matter of fact.  And I do look ahead perhaps further than you do.  I certainly wouldn’t promise anything I wouldn’t try to perform.  In fact, I’m very keen about them.  And I believe if we scrapped all the machinery and got new ”

“When you’ve mastered the present machinery, it will be time to talk about scrapping it,” answered Daniel.  “People are always shouting out for new things, and when they get them and sacrifice a year’s profits very likely in doing so often the first thing they hear from the operatives is, that the old machinery was much better.  Our father always liked to see other firms make the experiments.”

“That’s the way to get left, if you ask me.”

“I don’t ask you,” answered the master.  “I’m telling you, Raymond; and you ought to remember that I very well know what I’m talking about and you don’t.  You must give me some credit.  To question me is to question our father, for I learned everything from him.”

“But times change.  You don’t want to be left high and dry in the march of progress, my dear chap.”

“No you needn’t fear that.  If you’re young, you’re a part of progress; you belong to it.  But you must get a general knowledge of the present situation in our trade before you can do anything rational in the shape of progress.  I’ve been left a very fine business with a very honoured name to keep up, and if I begin trying to run before I can walk, I should very soon fall down.  You must see that.”

Raymond nodded.

“Yes, that’s all right.  I’m a learner and I know you can teach me a lot.”

“If you’d come to me instead of to the mill people.”

“You don’t know their side.”

“Much better than you do.  I’ve talked with our father often and often about it.  He was no tyrant and nobody could ever accuse him of injustice.”

Raymond flashed; but he kept his mouth shut on that theme.  The only bitter quarrels between the brothers had been on the subject of their father, and the younger knew that the ground was dangerous.  At this moment the last thing he desired was any difference with Daniel.

“I’ll keep it all in mind, Dan.  I don’t want to do anything to annoy you, God knows.  Is there any more?  I must go and look after young Estelle.”

“Only one thing; and this is purely personal, and so I hope you’ll excuse me.  I’ve just been seeing Uncle Ernest, and nobody wished us better fortune than he does.”

“He’s a good old boy.  I’ve learned a lot about spinning from him.”

“I know.  But look here, Raymond, I do beg of you I implore of you not to be too friendly with Sabina Dinnett.  You can’t think how I should hate anything like that.  It isn’t fair it isn’t fair to the woman, or to me, or to the family.  You must see yourself that sort of thing isn’t right.  She’s a very good girl our champion spinner Best says; and if you go distracting her and taking her out of her station, you are doing her a very cruel turn and upsetting her peace of mind.  And the others will be jealous, of course, and so it will go on.  It isn’t playing the game it really isn’t.  That’s all.  I know you’re a sportsman and all that; so I do beg you’ll be a sportsman in business too, and take a proper line and remember your obligations.  And if I’ve said a harsh, or unfair word, I’m sorry for it; but you know I haven’t.”

Seeing that Sabina Dinnett was now in paramount and triumphant possession of Raymond’s mind, he felt thankful that his brother, by running on over this subject and concluding upon the whole question, had saved him the necessity for any direct reply.  Whether he would have lied or no concerning Sabina, Raymond did not stop to consider.  There is little doubt that he would.  But the need was escaped; and so thankful did he feel, that he responded to the admonishment in a tone more complete and with promises more comprehensive than Daniel expected.

“You’re dead right.  Of course I know it!  I’ve been a silly fool all round.  But I won’t open my mouth so wide in future, Dan.  And don’t think I’m wasting my time.  I’m working like the devil, really, and learning everything from the beginning.  Best will tell you that’s true.  He’s a splendid teacher and I’ll see more of him in future.  And I’ll read all about yarn and get the hang of the markets, and so on.”

“Thank you you can’t say more.  And you might come into Bridport oftener, I think.  Aunt Jenny was saying she never sees you now.”

“I will,” promised Raymond.  “I’m going to dine with you both on my birthday.  I believe she’ll be good for fifty quid this year.  Father left her a legacy of a thousand.”

They parted, and Raymond returned to Estelle, who was now watching the warping, while Daniel went into his foreman’s office.

Estelle was radiant.  She had fallen in love with the works.

“The girls are all so kind and clever,” she said.

“Rather so.  I expect you know all about everything now.”

“Hardly anything yet.  But you must let me come again.  I do want to know all about it.  It is splendidly interesting.”

“Of course, come and go when you like, kiddy.”

“And I’m going to ask some of them to tea with me,” declared Estelle.  “They all love flowers, and I’m going to show them our garden and my pets.  I’ve asked seven of them and two men.”

“Ask me, too.”

She brought out a piece of paper and showed him that she had written down nine names.

“And if they like it, they’ll tell the others and I shall ask them too,” she said.  “Father is always wanting me to spend money, so now I’ll spend some on a beautiful tea.”

Raymond saw the name of Sabina Dinnett.

“I’ll be there to help you,” he promised.

“Nicholas Roberts is the lover of Miss Northover,” explained Estelle, “and Benny Cogle is the lover of Miss Gale.  That’s why I asked them.  I very nearly went back and asked Mister Baggs to come, because he seems a silent, sad man; but I was rather frightened of him.”

“Don’t ask him; he’s an old bear,” declared Raymond.

Thus, forgetting his brother as though Daniel had ceased to exist, he threw himself into Estelle’s enterprise and planned an entertainment that must at least have rendered the master uneasy.