Nicholas Higgins was sitting by the fire smoking, as she went in.  Bessy was rocking herself on the other side.

Nicholas took the pipe out of his mouth, and standing up, pushed his chair towards Margaret; he leant against the chimney piece in a lounging attitude, while she asked Bessy how she was.

‘Hoo’s rather down i’ th’ mouth in regard to spirits, but hoo’s better in health.  Hoo doesn’t like this strike.  Hoo’s a deal too much set on peace and quietness at any price.’

‘This is th’ third strike I’ve seen,’ said she, sighing, as if that was answer and explanation enough.

‘Well, third time pays for all.  See if we don’t dang th’ masters this time.  See if they don’t come, and beg us to come back at our own price.  That’s all.  We’ve missed it afore time, I grant yo’; but this time we’n laid our plans desperate deep.’

‘Why do you strike?’ asked Margaret.  ’Striking is leaving off work till you get your own rate of wages, is it not?  You must not wonder at my ignorance; where I come from I never heard of a strike.’

‘I wish I were there,’ said Bessy, wearily.  ’But it’s not for me to get sick and tired o’ strikes.  This is the last I’ll see.  Before it’s ended I shall be in the Great City—­the Holy Jerusalem.’

‘Hoo’s so full of th’ life to come, hoo cannot think of th’ present.  Now I, yo’ see, am bound to do the best I can here.  I think a bird i’ th’ hand is worth two i’ th’ bush.  So them’s the different views we take on th’ strike question.’

‘But,’ said Margaret, ’if the people struck, as you call it, where I come from, as they are mostly all field labourers, the seed would not be sown, the hay got in, the corn reaped.’

‘Well?’ said he.  He had resumed his pipe, and put his ‘well’ in the form of an interrogation.

‘Why,’ she went on, ‘what would become of the farmers.’

He puffed away.  ’I reckon they’d have either to give up their farms, or to give fair rate of wage.’

’Suppose they could not, or would not do the last; they could not give up their farms all in a minute, however much they might wish to do so; but they would have no hay, nor corn to sell that year; and where would the money come from to pay the labourers’ wages the next?’

Still puffing away.  At last he said: 

’I know nought of your ways down South.  I have heerd they’re a pack of spiritless, down-trodden men; welly clemmed to death; too much dazed wi’ clemming to know when they’re put upon.  Now, it’s not so here.  We known when we’re put upon; and we’en too much blood in us to stand it.  We just take our hands fro’ our looms, and say, “Yo’ may clem us, but yo’ll not put upon us, my masters!” And be danged to ’em, they shan’t this time!’

‘I wish I lived down South,’ said Bessy.

‘There’s a deal to bear there,’ said Margaret.  ’There are sorrows to bear everywhere.  There is very hard bodily labour to be gone through, with very little food to give strength.’