Ironsyde came to the works one morning to watch a new Twist Frame and a new operator.  The single strand yarn for material from the spinners was coming to the Twist Frame to be turned into twines and fishing lines.  Four full bobbins from the spinning machine went to each spindle of the Twist Frame, and from it emerged a strong ‘four-ply.’  It was a machine more complicated than the spinner; and, as only a good billiard player can appreciate the cleverness of a great player, so only a spinner might have admired the rare technical skill of the woman who controlled the Twist Frame.

The soul of the works persisted, though the people and the machines were changed.  The old photographs and old verses had gone, but new pictures and poems took their places in the workers’ corners; and new fashion-plates hung where the old ones used to hang.  The drawers, and the rovers, the spreaders and the spinners still, like bower-birds, adorned the scenes of their toil.  A valentine or two and the portrait of a gamekeeper and his dog hung beside the carding machine; for Sally Groves had retired and a younger woman was in her place.  She, too, fed the Card by hand, but not so perfectly as Sally was wont to do.

Estelle had come to see the Twist Frame.  She cared much for the Mill women and spent a good portion of her hours with them.  A very genuine friendship, little tainted with time-serving, or self-interest, obtained for her in the works.  On her side, she valued the goodwill of the workers as her best possession, and found among them a field for study in human nature and, in their work, matter for poetry and art.  For were not all three Fates to be seen at their eternal business here?  Clotho attended the Spread Board; the can-minders coiling away the sliver, stood for Lachesis; while in the spinners, who cut the thread when the bobbin was full, Estelle found Atropos, the goddess of the shears.

Mr. Best, grown grizzled, but active still and with no immediate thoughts of retirement, observed the operations of the new spinner at the Twist Frame.  She was a woman from Bridport, lured to Bridetown by increase of wages.

John, who was a man of enthusiasms, turned to Estelle.

“The best spinner that ever came to Bridetown,” he whispered.

“Better than Sabina Dinnett?” she asked; and Best declared that she was.  So passage of time soon deadens the outline of all achievement, and living events that happen under our eyes, offer a statement of the quick and real with which beautiful dead things, embalmed in the amber of memory, cannot cope.

“Sabina, at her best, never touched her, Miss Waldron.”

“Sabina braids still in her spare time.  Nobody makes better nets.”