’I heard, moreover, that it was considered to the advantage of the masters to have ignorant workmen—­not hedge-lawyers, as Captain Lennox used to call those men in his company who questioned and would know the reason for every order.’  This latter part of her sentence she addressed rather to her father than to Mr. Thornton.  Who is Captain Lennox? asked Mr. Thornton of himself, with a strange kind of displeasure, that prevented him for the moment from replying to her!  Her father took up the conversation.

’You never were fond of schools, Margaret, or you would have seen and known before this, how much is being done for education in Milton.’

‘No!’ said she, with sudden meekness.  ’I know I do not care enough about schools.  But the knowledge and the ignorance of which I was speaking, did not relate to reading and writing,—­the teaching or information one can give to a child.  I am sure, that what was meant was ignorance of the wisdom that shall guide men and women.  I hardly know what that is.  But he—­that is, my informant—­spoke as if the masters would like their hands to be merely tall, large children—­living in the present moment—­with a blind unreasoning kind of obedience.’

’In short, Miss Hale, it is very evident that your informant found a pretty ready listener to all the slander he chose to utter against the masters,’ said Mr. Thornton, in an offended tone.

Margaret did not reply.  She was displeased at the personal character Mr. Thornton affixed to what she had said.

Mr. Hale spoke next: 

’I must confess that, although I have not become so intimately acquainted with any workmen as Margaret has, I am very much struck by the antagonism between the employer and the employed, on the very surface of things.  I even gather this impression from what you yourself have from time to time said.’

Mr. Thornton paused awhile before he spoke.  Margaret had just left the room, and he was vexed at the state of feeling between himself and her.  However, the little annoyance, by making him cooler and more thoughtful, gave a greater dignity to what he said: 

’My theory is, that my interests are identical with those of my workpeople and vice-versa.  Miss Hale, I know, does not like to hear men called ‘hands,’ so I won’t use that word, though it comes most readily to my lips as the technical term, whose origin, whatever it was, dates before my time.  On some future day—­in some millennium—­in Utopia, this unity may be brought into practice—­just as I can fancy a republic the most perfect form of government.’

’We will read Plato’s Republic as soon as we have finished Homer.’