The question was referred to Mr. Hale by his wife, when he came up-stairs, fresh from giving a lesson to Mr. Thornton, which had ended in conversation, as was their wont.  Margaret did not care if their gifts had prolonged the strike; she did not think far enough for that, in her present excited state.

Mr. Hale listened, and tried to be as calm as a judge; he recalled all that had seemed so clear not half-an-hour before, as it came out of Mr. Thornton’s lips; and then he made an unsatisfactory compromise.  His wife and daughter had not only done quite right in this instance, but he did not see for a moment how they could have done otherwise.  Nevertheless, as a general rule, it was very true what Mr. Thornton said, that as the strike, if prolonged, must end in the masters’ bringing hands from a distance (if, indeed, the final result were not, as it had often been before, the invention of some machine which would diminish the need of hands at all), why, it was clear enough that the kindest thing was to refuse all help which might bolster them up in their folly.  But, as to this Boucher, he would go and see him the first thing in the morning, and try and find out what could be done for him.

Mr. Hale went the next morning, as he proposed.  He did not find Boucher at home, but he had a long talk with his wife; promised to ask for an Infirmary order for her; and, seeing the plenty provided by Mrs. Hale, and somewhat lavishly used by the children, who were masters down-stairs in their father’s absence, he came back with a more consoling and cheerful account than Margaret had dared to hope for; indeed, what she had said the night before had prepared her father for so much worse a state of things that, by a reaction of his imagination, he described all as better than it really was.

‘But I will go again, and see the man himself,’ said Mr. Hale.  ’I hardly know as yet how to compare one of these houses with our Helstone cottages.  I see furniture here which our labourers would never have thought of buying, and food commonly used which they would consider luxuries; yet for these very families there seems no other resource, now that their weekly wages are stopped, but the pawn-shop.  One had need to learn a different language, and measure by a different standard, up here in Milton.’

Bessy, too, was rather better this day.  Still she was so weak that she seemed to have entirely forgotten her wish to see Margaret dressed—­if, indeed, that had not been the feverish desire of a half-delirious state.

Margaret could not help comparing this strange dressing of hers, to go where she did not care to be—­her heart heavy with various anxieties—­with the old, merry, girlish toilettes that she and Edith had performed scarcely more than a year ago.  Her only pleasure now in decking herself out was in thinking that her mother would take delight in seeing her dressed.  She blushed when Dixon, throwing the drawing-room door open, made an appeal for admiration.