n her shoulder. In a marvellously
short time she had doffed the bobbins and set up a hundred empty ones.
Then the cut threads were readjusted, the power turned on and all was
motion again.

Sabina had never calculated her labours, until Raymond took the trouble
to do so; then she learned a fact that astonished her. He found that it
took a hundred and fifty minutes to spin one thousand and fifty yards;
and as each spindle spun two and a half miles in ten hours, her daily
accomplishment was two hundred and fifty miles of yarn.

"You spin from seventy to eighty thousand miles of single yarn a year,"
he told her, and the fact expressed in these terms amazed her and her
sister spinners.

Now Nelly Northover praised the performance.

"To think that you slips of girls can do anything so wonderful!" she
said. "We talk of the spinners of Bridport as if they were nobodies; but
upon my conscience, Sabina, I never will again. I've always thought I
was a pretty busy woman; but I'd drop to the earth I'm sure after an
hour of your job, let alone ten hours."

Sabina laughed.

"It's use, Mrs. Northover. Some take to it like a duck to water. I did
for one. But some never do. If you come to the Frame frightened, you
never make a spinner. They're like humans, the Spinning Frames; if they
think you're afraid of them, they'll always bully you, but if you show
them you're mistress, it's all right. They have their moods and whims,
just as we have. They vary, and you never know how the day will go.
Sometimes everything runs smoothly; sometimes nothing does. Some days
you're as fresh at the end as the beginning; some days you're dog-tired
and worn out after a proper fight."

"There's something hungry and cruel and wicked about 'em to my eye,"
declared Mrs. Northover.

"We're oftener in fault than the Frames, however. Sometimes the
spinner's to blame herself--she may be out of sorts and heavy-handed and
slow on her feet and can't put up her ends right, or do anything right;
and often it's the fault of the other girls and the 'rove' comes to the
spinner rough; and often, again, it's just luck--good or bad. If the
machine always ran perfect, there'd be nothing to do. But you've got
to use your wits from the time it starts to the time it stops."

"The creature would best me every time," said the visitor, regarding
Sabina's machine with suspicion and something akin to dislike.

The spinner stopped a fouled spindle and rubbed her hand.