Her father never doubted Estelle’s judgment or crossed her wishes.  Therefore he approved of the proposed party and did his best to make it a success.  Others also were glad to aid Estelle and, to her delight, Ernest Churchouse, with whom she was in favour, yielded to entreaty and joined the company on the lawn of North Hill House.  Tea was served out of doors, and to it there came nine workers from the mill, and two of Mr. Best’s own girls, who were friends of Estelle.  Nicholas Roberts arrived with his future wife, Sarah Northover; Sabina Dinnett came with Nancy Buckler and Sally Groves from the Carding Machine, while Alice Chick brought old Mrs. Chick; Mercy Gale came too—­a fair, florid girl, who warped the yarn when it was spun.

Mr. Waldron was not a ladies’ man, and after helping with the tea, served under a big mulberry tree in the garden, he turned his attention to Mr. Roberts, already known favourably to him as a cricketer, and Benny Cogle, the engine man.  They departed to look at a litter of puppies and the others perambulated the gardens.  Estelle had a plot of her own, where grew roses, and here, presently, each with a rose at her breast, the girls sat about on an old stone seat and listened to Mr. Churchouse discourse on the lore of their trade.

Some, indeed, were bored by the subject and stole away to play beside a fountain and lily pond, where the gold fish were tame and crowded to their hands for food; but others listened and learned surprising facts that set the thoughtful girls wondering.

“You mustn’t think, you spinners, that you are the last word in spinning,” he said; “no, Alice and Nancy and Sabina, you’re not; no more are those at other mills, who spin in choicer materials than flax and hemp—­I mean the workers in cotton and silk.  For the law of things in general, called evolution, seems to stand still when machinery comes to increase output and confuse our ideas of quality and quantity.  Missis Chick here will tell you, when she was a spinner and the old rope walks were not things of the past, that she spun quite as good yarn from the bundle of tow at her waist as you do from the regulation spinners.”

“And better,” said Mrs. Chick.

“I believe you,” declared Ernest, “and before your time the yarn was better still.  For, though some of the best brains in men’s heads have been devoted to the subject, we go backwards instead of forwards, and things have been done in spinning that I believe will never be done again.  In fact, the further you go back, the better the yarn seems to have been, and I’m sure I don’t know how the laws of evolution can explain that.  The secret is this:  machinery, for all its marvellous improvements, lags far behind the human hand, and the record yarns were spun in the East, while our forefathers still went about in wolf-skins and painted their faces blue.  You may laugh, but it is so.”

“Tell us about them, Mister Churchouse,” begged Estelle.