“Keep thyself to thyself, Stephen.  Singing beats grumbling all to pieces.  Give me the man who can sing at six o’clock in the morning.  He is worth trusting and loving, I’ll warrant that.  I wish thou would sing thyself.  Happen it might sweeten thee a bit.”  And Stephen Hatton had kept himself to himself, about John’s early singing thereafter.

This morning there was no song in John’s heart and no song on his lips.  He dressed silently and rapidly as if he was in a hurry to do something and yet he did not know what to do.  His mother’s positive assertion, that the best way out of the difficulty was to let it solve itself, did not satisfy him.  He wanted to see his wife.  He knew he must say some plain, hard words to her; but she loved him, and she would surely listen and understand how hard it was for him to say them.

He went early to the mill.  He hoped there might be a letter there for him.  When he found none among his mail, he hurried back to his home.  “Jane would send her letter there,” he thought.  But there was no letter there.  Then his heart sank within him, but he took no further step at that hour.  Business from hundreds of looms called him.  Hundreds of workers were busy among them.  Greenwood was watching for him.  Clerks were waiting for his directions and the great House of Labor shouted from all its myriad windows.

With a pitiful and involuntary “God help me!” he buckled himself to his mail.  It was larger than ordinary, but he went with exact and patient care over it.  He said to himself, “Troubles love to flock together and I expect I shall find a worrying letter from Harry this morning”; but there was no letter at all from Harry and he felt relieved.  The only personal note that came to him was a request that he would not fail to be present at the meeting of the Gentlemen’s Club that evening, as there was important business to transact.

He sat with this message in his hand, considering.  He had for some time felt uneasy about his continuance in the Club, for its social regulations were strict and limited.  Composed mostly of the landed gentry in the neighborhood, it had very slowly and reluctantly opened its doors to a few of the most wealthy manufacturers, and Harry’s appearance as a public and professional singer negatived his right to its exclusive membership.  In case Harry was asked to resign, John would certainly withdraw with his brother.  Yet the mere thought of such a social humiliation troubled him.

When the mail was attended to be rose quickly, shook himself, as if he would shake off the trouble that oppressed him, and went through the mill with Greenwood.  This duty he performed with such minute attention that the overseer privately wondered whatever was the matter with “Master John,” but soon settled the question, by a decision that “he hed been worried by his wife a bit, and it hed put him all out of gear, and no wonder.”  For Greenwood had had his own experiences of this kind and had suffered many things in consequence of them.  So he was sorry for John as he told himself that “whether married men were rich or poor, things were pretty equal for them.”