built and born to tend a Carding Machine. She moved with dignity
despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to
foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as
another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither
elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of
skill, resolution and good sense. The great woman ennobled her work;
through the dust and din, with placid and amiable features, she peered,
and ceased not hour after hour, to spread the tow truly and evenly upon
the rolling board. One of less experience might have needed to weigh her
material, but Sally never weighed; by long practice and good judgment,
she produced sliver of even texture.

The carder panted, crashed and shook with its energies. It glimmered all
over with the bright, hairy gossamer of the tow, which wound thinly
through systems of fast and slow wheels. Between them the material was
lashed and pricked, divided and sub-divided, torn and lacerated by
thousands of pins, that separated strand from strand and shook the
stuff to its integral fibres before building it up again. Despite the
thunder and the suggestion of immense forces exerted upon the frail
material, utmost delicacy marked the operations of the card. Any real
strain must have torn to atoms the fine amber coils in which it ejected
the strips of shining sliver. Enormous waste marked the operation.
Beneath the machine rose mounds of dust and dirt, and fluff, light as
thistledown; while as much was sucked away into the air by the exhaust
above.

In a lion-coloured overall and under a hat tied beneath her chin with a
yellow handkerchief, Sally Groves pursued her task. Then came to her
Sabina Dinnett and, ceasing not to spread her tow the while, Sally spoke
serious words.

"I asked Nancy Buckler to send you along when your machine stopped a
minute. You won't be vexed with me if I say something, will you?"

"Vexed with you, Sally? Who ever was vexed with you?"

"I'm old enough to be your mother, and 'tis her work if anybody's to
speak to you," explained Sally; "but she's not here, and she don't see
what I can't help seeing."

"What have you seen then?"

"I've seen a very good-looking young man by the name of Raymond Ironsyde
wasting a deuce of a lot of his time by your spinning frame; and wasting
your time, too."

Sabina changed colour.

"Fancy you saying that!" she exclaimed. "He's got to learn the