“But you don’t look particularly fit yourself, Cally.  What’s wrong with the world?”

Cally, being still uncertain how far she cared to confide in Hen, met the direct question with a tentative lightness.

“Oh!...  Well, I did just have a rather unpleasant experience, though I didn’t know I showed it in my face!...  We happened to look in at the Works for a few minutes—­Mr. Canning and I—­and I certainly didn’t enjoy it much ...”  And then, the inner pressure overcoming her natural bent toward reserve, she spoke with a little burst:  “Oh, Hen, it was the most horrible place I ever saw in my life!”

The little confidence spoke straight to the heart, as a touch of genuine feeling always will.  Quite unconsciously, Henrietta took her cousin’s hand, saying, “You poor dear ...”  And within a minute or two Cally was eagerly pouring out all that she had seen in the bunching-room, with at least a part of how it had made her feel.

Hen listened sympathetically, and spoke reassuringly.  If her “arguments” followed close in the footsteps of Hugo,—­for Hen was surprisingly well-informed in unexpected ways,—­it must have been some quality in her, something or other in her underlying “attitude,” that invested her words with a new horsepower of solace.  And Saltman’s best stenographer actually produced an argument that Hugo had altogether passed by.  She thought it worth while to point out that these things were not a question of abstract morals at all, but only of changing points of view....

“When Uncle Thornton learned business,” declared Hen, “there wasn’t a labor law in the country—­no law but supply and demand—­pay your work-people as little as you could, and squeeze them all they’d stand for.  Nobody ever thought of anything different.  In those days the Works would have been a model plant—­nine-hour day, high wages, no women working at night, no children....”

If Cally was not wholly heartened by words like these, she knew where the lack was.  And perhaps Hen herself was conscious of something missing.  For, having defended her uncle’s Works at least as loyally as she honestly could, she gave the talk a more personal tone, skirting those phases of the matter so new-thoughty that they had never even occurred to Hugo Canning.

“Cally, are you going to speak to Uncle Thornton about it—­about your going there, I mean?”

“No, no!” cried Cally, hastily.  “How could I?  Of course I—­realize that that’s the way business must be—­as you say.  What right have I, an ignorant little fool, to set up as papa’s critic?”

“Not at all—­of course,” said Hen, giving her hand a little squeeze.  “What I—­”

“You surely can’t think that I ought to go and reprove papa for the way he runs his business—­do you, Hen?...  That I—­I’m responsible in any way!”

Hen noted her cousin’s unexplained nervousness, and it may be she divined a little further.  She answered no, not a bit of it.  She said she meant to speak to him, not as a business expert, but only as his daughter.  It was always a mistake to have secrets in a family, said Hen.