‘And if she has,’ said he—­and then he paused for a moment—­then went on:  ’I’m not a lad, to be cowed by a proud look from a woman, or to care for her misunderstanding me and my position.  I can laugh at it!’

’To be sure! and at her too, with her fine notions and haughty tosses!’

‘I only wonder why you talk so much about her, then,’ said Fanny.  ‘I’m sure, I’m tired enough of the subject.’

‘Well!’ said her brother, with a shade of bitterness.  ’Suppose we find some more agreeable subject.  What do you say to a strike, by way of something pleasant to talk about?’

‘Have the hands actually turned out?’ asked Mrs. Thornton, with vivid interest.

’Hamper’s men are actually out.  Mine are working out their week, through fear of being prosecuted for breach of contract I’d have had every one of them up and punished for it, that left his work before his time was out.’

’The law expenses would have been more than the hands them selves were worth—­a set of ungrateful naughts!’ said his mother.

’To be sure.  But I’d have shown them how I keep my word, and how I mean them to keep theirs.  They know me by this time.  Slickson’s men are off—­pretty certain he won’t spend money in getting them punished.  We’re in for a turn-out, mother.’

‘I hope there are not many orders in hand?’

’Of course there are.  They know that well enough.  But they don’t quite understand all, though they think they do.’

‘What do you mean, John?’

Candles had been brought, and Fanny had taken up her interminable piece of worsted-work, over which she was yawning; throwing herself back in her chair, from time to time, to gaze at vacancy, and think of nothing at her ease.

‘Why,’ said he, ’the Americans are getting their yarns so into the general market, that our only chance is producing them at a lower rate.  If we can’t, we may shut up shop at once, and hands and masters go alike on tramp.  Yet these fools go back to the prices paid three years ago—­nay, some of their leaders quote Dickinson’s prices now—­though they know as well as we do that, what with fines pressed out of their wages as no honourable man would extort them, and other ways which I for one would scorn to use, the real rate of wage paid at Dickinson’s is less than at ours.  Upon my word, mother, I wish the old combination-laws were in force.  It is too bad to find out that fools—­ignorant wayward men like these—­just by uniting their weak silly heads, are to rule over the fortunes of those who bring all the wisdom that knowledge and experience, and often painful thought and anxiety, can give.  The next thing will be—­indeed, we’re all but come to it now—­that we shall have to go and ask—­stand hat in hand—­and humbly ask the secretary of the Spinner’ Union to be so kind as to furnish us with labour at their own price.  That’s what they want—­they, who haven’t the sense to see that, if we don’t get a fair share of the profits to compensate us for our wear and tear here in England, we can move off to some other country; and that, what with home and foreign competition, we are none of us likely to make above a fair share, and may be thankful enough if we can get that, in an average number of years.’