Another Bridetown girl—­Alice Chick, the spinner—­had been spending her half holiday in Bridport.  Now she met Sarah, by appointment, at the top of South Street and the two returned together.

CHAPTER VII

A WALK

The Carding Machine was a squat and noisy monster.  Mr. Best confessed that it had put him in mind of a passage from Holy Writ, for it seemed to be all eyes, behind and before.  The eyes were wheels, and beneath, the mass of the carder opened its mouth—­a thin and hungry slit into which wound an endless band.  Spread upon this leathern roller was the hemp tow—­that mass of short material which Levi Baggs, the hackler, pruned away from his long strides.  As for the minder, Sally Groves, she seemed built and born to tend a Carding Machine.  She moved with dignity despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of skill, resolution and good sense.  The great woman ennobled her work; through the dust and din, with placid and amiable features, she peered, and ceased not hour after hour, to spread the tow truly and evenly upon the rolling board.  One of less experience might have needed to weigh her material, but Sally never weighed; by long practice and good judgment, she produced sliver of even texture.

The carder panted, crashed and shook with its energies.  It glimmered all over with the bright, hairy gossamer of the tow, which wound thinly through systems of fast and slow wheels.  Between them the material was lashed and pricked, divided and sub-divided, torn and lacerated by thousands of pins, that separated strand from strand and shook the stuff to its integral fibres before building it up again.  Despite the thunder and the suggestion of immense forces exerted upon the frail material, utmost delicacy marked the operations of the card.  Any real strain must have torn to atoms the fine amber coils in which it ejected the strips of shining sliver.  Enormous waste marked the operation.  Beneath the machine rose mounds of dust and dirt, and fluff, light as thistledown; while as much was sucked away into the air by the exhaust above.

In a lion-coloured overall and under a hat tied beneath her chin with a yellow handkerchief, Sally Groves pursued her task.  Then came to her Sabina Dinnett and, ceasing not to spread her tow the while, Sally spoke serious words.

“I asked Nancy Buckler to send you along when your machine stopped a minute.  You won’t be vexed with me if I say something, will you?”

“Vexed with you, Sally?  Who ever was vexed with you?”

“I’m old enough to be your mother, and ’tis her work if anybody’s to speak to you,” explained Sally; “but she’s not here, and she don’t see what I can’t help seeing.”