Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while she strained to follow them.  But she was bewildered and entranced by the marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex machines, fed by human hands, performed its function.  These human hands were swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the ring-spinning frames to be twisted into yarn.  She saw a woman, in the space of an instant, mend a broken thread.  Women and boys were here, doffer boys to lift off the full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on the empty bobbins with the other:  while skilled workmen, alert for the first sign of trouble, followed up and down in its travels the long frame of the mule-spinner.  After the spinning, the heavy spools of yarn were carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a huge spider’s web, where hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and wound evenly, side by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric to be woven on the loom.  First, however, this warp must be stiffened or “slashed” in starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound around one great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by one, and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all day under the north windows overlooking the canal—­the “drawers-in” of whom Ditmar had spoken.  Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the threads attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound.  The looms absorbed and fascinated Janet above all else.  It seemed as if she would never tire of watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the harnesses,—­each rapid movement making a V in the warp, within the angle of which the tiny shuttles darted to and fro, to and fro, carrying the thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness so great the eye could scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when the angle closed, and flung back, and back again!  And in the elaborate patterns not one, but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for the impulse bidding it rise and fall!...  Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the machines halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread, tied it, and started the loom again.

“That’s intelligent of it,” said Caldwell, in her ear.  But she could only nod in reply.

The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive.  She began to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain all day long.  She had never thought much about them before save to compare vaguely their drudgery with that from which now she had been emancipated; but she began to feel a new respect, a new concern, a new curiosity and interest as she watched them passing from place to place with indifference between the whirling belts, up and down the narrow aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, clattering machinery whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back the light of the electric bulbs on the ceiling.