After the mechanical activity, movement came from the irregular actions of the workers.  Forty women and girls laboured here, and while some old people only sat on stools by the spouting sliver and wound it away into the tall cans that received it, other younger folk were more intensively engaged.  The massive figure of Sally Groves lumbered at her ministry, where she fed the Carding Machine.  She was subdued to the colour of the hemp tow with which she plied it.  Elsewhere Sarah Northover flashed the tresses of long lines over her head and seemed to perform a rhythmic dance with her hands, as she tore each strick into three and laid the shining locks on her spread board.  Others tended the drawers and rovers, while Sabina Dinnett, Nancy Buckler and Alice Chick, whose high task it was to spin, seemed to twinkle here, there and everywhere in a corybantic measure as they served the shouting and insatiable monsters that turned hemp and flax to yarn.

They, indeed, specially attracted Raymond, by the activity of their work and the charm of their swift, supple figures, where, never still, they danced about, with a thousand, strenuous activities of hand and foot and eye.  Their work dazed him and he wanted to stop here and ask Sabina many questions.  She looked much more beautiful while spinning than in her black dress and white apron—­so the young man thought.  Her work displayed her neat, slim shape as she twirled round, stooped, leapt up again, twisted and stood on tip-toe in a thousand fascinating attitudes.  Never a dancer in the limelight had revealed so much beauty.  She was rayed in a brown gown with a short skirt, and on her head she wore a grey woollen cap.

But Mr. Best forbade interest in the spinners.

“You’ll not get to them for a week yet,” he said.  “I’ll ask you to just take in the general hang of it, Mister Raymond, please.  Power comes from the water-wheel and the steam engine and it’s brought down to each machine.  Just throw your eyes round.  You ain’t here to look at the girls, if you’ll excuse my saying so.  You’re here to learn.”

“You can learn more from the girls than all these noisy things put together,” laughed Raymond; while Mr. Best shook his head and proceeded with his instructions.

“Those exhausts above each system suck away the dust and small rubbish,” he explained.  “We shouldn’t be able to breathe without them.”

The other looked up and saw great leaden-coloured tubes, like organ pipes, above him.  Mr. Best droned on and strove to lay a foundation for future knowledge.  He was skilled in every branch of the work, and a past master of all spinning mysteries.  His lucid and simple exposition had very well served to introduce an attentive stranger to the complex operations going on around him, but Raymond was not attentive.  He failed to concentrate and missed fundamental essentials from the desire to examine more advanced and obviously interesting operations.