‘Don’t ask me,’ said Margaret; ’I am very ignorant.  Ask some of your masters.  Surely they will give you a reason for it.  It is not merely an arbitrary decision of theirs, come to without reason.’

‘Yo’re just a foreigner, and nothing more,’ said he, contemptuously.  ‘Much yo’ know about it.  Ask th’ masters!  They’d tell us to mind our own business, and they’d mind theirs.  Our business being, yo’ understand, to take the bated’ wage, and be thankful, and their business to bate us down to clemming point, to swell their profits.  That’s what it is.’

’But said Margaret, determined not to give way, although she saw she was irritating him, ’the state of trade may be such as not to enable them to give you the same remuneration.

‘State o’ trade!  That’s just a piece o’ masters’ humbug.  It’s rate o’ wages I was talking of.  Th’ masters keep th’ state o’ trade in their own hands; and just walk it forward like a black bug-a-boo, to frighten naughty children with into being good.  I’ll tell yo’ it’s their part,—­their cue, as some folks call it,—­to beat us down, to swell their fortunes; and it’s ours to stand up and fight hard,—­not for ourselves alone, but for them round about us—­for justice and fair play.  We help to make their profits, and we ought to help spend ’em.  It’s not that we want their brass so much this time, as we’ve done many a time afore.  We’n getten money laid by; and we’re resolved to stand and fall together; not a man on us will go in for less wage than th’ Union says is our due.  So I say, “hooray for the strike,” and let Thornton, and Slickson, and Hamper, and their set look to it!’

‘Thornton!’ said Margaret.  ‘Mr. Thornton of Marlborough Street?’

‘Aye!  Thornton o’ Marlborough Mill, as we call him.’

’He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not?  What sort of a master is he?’

‘Did yo’ ever see a bulldog?  Set a bulldog on hind legs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo’n just getten John Thornton.’

‘Nay,’ said Margaret, laughing, ’I deny that.  Mr. Thornton is plain enough, but he’s not like a bulldog, with its short broad nose, and snarling upper lip.’

‘No! not in look, I grant yo’.  But let John Thornton get hold on a notion, and he’ll stick to it like a bulldog; yo’ might pull him away wi’ a pitch-fork ere he’d leave go.  He’s worth fighting wi’, is John Thornton.  As for Slickson, I take it, some o’ these days he’ll wheedle his men back wi’ fair promises; that they’ll just get cheated out of as soon as they’re in his power again.  He’ll work his fines well out on ’em, I’ll warrant.  He’s as slippery as an eel, he is.  He’s like a cat,—­as sleek, and cunning, and fierce.  It’ll never be an honest up and down fight wi’ him, as it will be wi’ Thornton.  Thornton’s as dour as a door-nail; an obstinate chap, every inch on him,—­th’ oud bulldog!’

‘Poor Bessy!’ said Margaret, turning round to her.  ’You sigh over it all.  You don’t like struggling and fighting as your father does, do you?’