For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over the horizon in the direction in which it lay.  It was all the darker from contrast with the pale gray-blue of the wintry sky; for in Heston there had been the earliest signs of frost.  Nearer to the town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke; perhaps, after all, more a loss of the fragrance of grass and herbage than any positive taste or smell.  Quick they were whirled over long, straight, hopeless streets of regularly-built houses, all small and of brick.  Here and there a great oblong many-windowed factory stood up, like a hen among her chickens, puffing out black ‘unparliamentary’ smoke, and sufficiently accounting for the cloud which Margaret had taken to foretell rain.  As they drove through the larger and wider streets, from the station to the hotel, they had to stop constantly; great loaded lurries blocked up the not over-wide thoroughfares.  Margaret had now and then been into the city in her drives with her aunt.  But there the heavy lumbering vehicles seemed various in their purposes and intent; here every van, every waggon and truck, bore cotton, either in the raw shape in bags, or the woven shape in bales of calico.  People thronged the footpaths, most of them well-dressed as regarded the material, but with a slovenly looseness which struck Margaret as different from the shabby, threadbare smartness of a similar class in London.

‘New Street,’ said Mr. Hale.  ’This, I believe, is the principal street in Milton.  Bell has often spoken to me about it.  It was the opening of this street from a lane into a great thoroughfare, thirty years ago, which has caused his property to rise so much in value.  Mr. Thornton’s mill must be somewhere not very far off, for he is Mr. Bell’s tenant.  But I fancy he dates from his warehouse.’

‘Where is our hotel, papa?’

’Close to the end of this street, I believe.  Shall we have lunch before or after we have looked at the houses we marked in the Milton Times?’

‘Oh, let us get our work done first.’

’Very well.  Then I will only see if there is any note or letter for me from Mr. Thornton, who said he would let me know anything he might hear about these houses, and then we will set off.  We will keep the cab; it will be safer than losing ourselves, and being too late for the train this afternoon.’

There were no letters awaiting him.  They set out on their house-hunting.  Thirty pounds a-year was all they could afford to give, but in Hampshire they could have met with a roomy house and pleasant garden for the money.  Here, even the necessary accommodation of two sitting-rooms and four bed-rooms seemed unattainable.  They went through their list, rejecting each as they visited it.  Then they looked at each other in dismay.