Chapter 20 - Page 2

conversation, as was their wont. Margaret did not care
if their gifts had prolonged the strike; she did not think far
enough for that, in her present excited state.

Mr. Hale listened, and tried to be as calm as a judge; he
recalled all that had seemed so clear not half-an-hour before, as
it came out of Mr. Thornton's lips; and then he made an
unsatisfactory compromise. His wife and daughter had not only
done quite right in this instance, but he did not see for a
moment how they could have done otherwise. Nevertheless, as a
general rule, it was very true what Mr. Thornton said, that as
the strike, if prolonged, must end in the masters' bringing hands
from a distance (if, indeed, the final result were not, as it had
often been before, the invention of some machine which would
diminish the need of hands at all), why, it was clear enough that
the kindest thing was to refuse all help which might bolster them
up in their folly. But, as to this Boucher, he would go and see
him the first thing in the morning, and try and find out what
could be done for him.

Mr. Hale went the next morning, as he proposed. He did not find
Boucher at home, but he had a long talk with his wife; promised
to ask for an Infirmary order for her; and, seeing the plenty
provided by Mrs. Hale, and somewhat lavishly used by the
children, who were masters down-stairs in their father's absence,
he came back with a more consoling and cheerful account than
Margaret had dared to hope for; indeed, what she had said the
night before had prepared her father for so much worse a state of
things that, by a reaction of his imagination, he described all
as better than it really was.

'But I will go again, and see the man himself,' said Mr. Hale. 'I
hardly know as yet how to compare one of these houses with our
Helstone cottages. I see furniture here which our labourers would
never have thought of buying, and food commonly used which they
would consider luxuries; yet for these very families there seems
no other resource, now that their weekly wages are stopped, but
the pawn-shop. One had need to learn a different language, and
measure by a different standard, up here in Milton.'

Bessy, too, was rather better this day. Still she was so weak
that she seemed to have entirely forgotten her wish to see
Margaret dressed--if, indeed, that had not been the feverish
desire of a half-delirious state.

Margaret could not help comparing this strange dressing of hers,
to go where she did not care to be--her heart heavy with various
anxieties--with the old, merry, girlish toilettes that she and
Edith had performed scarcely more than a year ago. Her only
pleasure now in decking herself out was in thinking that her
mother would