He apologised to John Best before the dinner-hour.

“This is only a preliminary canter,” he said.  “It’s all Greek to me and it will take time to get the thing clear.  It looks quite different to me from what it must to you.  I’ll get the general scheme into my head first and then work out the details.  A man’s mind can’t make order out of this chaos in a minute.”

He stood and tried to appreciate the trend of events.  He enjoyed the adventure, but at present made no effort to do more than enjoy it.  He would start to work later.  He began to like the din and the dusty light and the glitter and shine of polished metal and bright sliver eternally winding into the cans.  Round it hovered or sat the women like dull moths.  They wound the stream of hemp or flax away and snapped it when a can was full.  There was no pause or slackening, nothing but the whirl of living hands and arms and bodies, dead wheels and teeth and pulleys and pins operating on the inert tow.  The mediators, animate and inanimate, laboured together for its manufacture; while the masses of mingled wood and steel, leather and brass and iron, moved in controlled obedience to the giant forces liberated from steam and water that drove all.  The selfsame power, gleaned from sunshine and moisture and sublimated to human flesh and blood through bread, plied in the fingers and muscles and countless, complex mental directions of the men and women who controlled.  From sun-light and air, earth and water had also sprung the fields of hemp and flax in far-off lands and yielded up their loveliness to foreign scutchers.  The dried death of countless beautiful herbs now represented the textile fabric on which all this immense energy was applied.

Thus far, along an obvious line of thought, Raymond’s reflections took him, but there his slight mental effort ended, and even this much tired him.  The time for dinner came; Mr. Best now turned certain hand-wheels and moved certain levers.  They shut off the power and gradually the din lessened, the pulsing and throbbing slowed until the whole great complexity came to a stand-still.  The drone of the overhead wheels ceased, the crash of the draw-heads stopped.  A startling silence seemed to grow out of the noise and quell it, while a new activity manifested itself among the workers.  As a bell rang they were changed in a twinkling and, amid chatter and laughter, like breaking chrysalids, they flung off their basset aprons and dun overalls, to emerge in brighter colours.  Blouses of pink and blue and red flashed out, straw hats and sun-bonnets appeared, and all streamed away like magic to their neighbouring houses.  It was as though its soul had passed and left a dead mill behind it.