‘Good-bye!’ said Margaret, hastily.  ’Good-bye, Bessy!  I shall look to see you on the twenty-first, if you’re well enough.’

The medicines and treatment which Dr. Donaldson had ordered for Mrs. Hale, did her so much good at first that not only she herself, but Margaret, began to hope that he might have been mistaken, and that she could recover permanently.  As for Mr. Hale, although he had never had an idea of the serious nature of their apprehensions, he triumphed over their fears with an evident relief, which proved how much his glimpse into the nature of them had affected him.  Only Dixon croaked for ever into Margaret’s ear.  However, Margaret defied the raven, and would hope.

They needed this gleam of brightness in-doors, for out-of-doors, even to their uninstructed eyes, there was a gloomy brooding appearance of discontent.  Mr. Hale had his own acquaintances among the working men, and was depressed with their earnestly told tales of suffering and long-endurance.  They would have scorned to speak of what they had to bear to any one who might, from his position, have understood it without their words.  But here was this man, from a distant county, who was perplexed by the workings of the system into the midst of which he was thrown, and each was eager to make him a judge, and to bring witness of his own causes for irritation.  Then Mr. Hale brought all his budget of grievances, and laid it before Mr. Thornton, for him, with his experience as a master, to arrange them, and explain their origin; which he always did, on sound economical principles; showing that, as trade was conducted, there must always be a waxing and waning of commercial prosperity; and that in the waning a certain number of masters, as well as of men, must go down into ruin, and be no more seen among the ranks of the happy and prosperous.  He spoke as if this consequence were so entirely logical, that neither employers nor employed had any right to complain if it became their fate:  the employer to turn aside from the race he could no longer run, with a bitter sense of incompetency and failure—­wounded in the struggle—­trampled down by his fellows in their haste to get rich—­slighted where he once was honoured—­humbly asking for, instead of bestowing, employment with a lordly hand.  Of course, speaking so of the fate that, as a master, might be his own in the fluctuations of commerce, he was not likely to have more sympathy with that of the workmen, who were passed by in the swift merciless improvement or alteration who would fain lie down and quietly die out of the world that needed them not, but felt as if they could never rest in their graves for the clinging cries of the beloved and helpless they would leave behind; who envied the power of the wild bird, that can feed her young with her very heart’s blood.  Margaret’s whole soul rose up against him while he reasoned in this way—­as if commerce were everything and humanity nothing.  She could hardly, thank him for the individual kindness,