de the carding machine; for Sally
Groves had retired and a younger woman was in her place. She, too, fed
the Card by hand, but not so perfectly as Sally was wont to do.

Estelle had come to see the Twist Frame. She cared much for the Mill
women and spent a good portion of her hours with them. A very genuine
friendship, little tainted with time-serving, or self-interest, obtained
for her in the works. On her side, she valued the goodwill of the
workers as her best possession, and found among them a field for study
in human nature and, in their work, matter for poetry and art. For were
not all three Fates to be seen at their eternal business here? Clotho
attended the Spread Board; the can-minders coiling away the sliver,
stood for Lachesis; while in the spinners, who cut the thread when the
bobbin was full, Estelle found Atropos, the goddess of the shears.

Mr. Best, grown grizzled, but active still and with no immediate
thoughts of retirement, observed the operations of the new spinner at
the Twist Frame. She was a woman from Bridport, lured to Bridetown by
increase of wages.

John, who was a man of enthusiasms, turned to Estelle.

"The best spinner that ever came to Bridetown," he whispered.

"Better than Sabina Dinnett?" she asked; and Best declared that she was.
So passage of time soon deadens the outline of all achievement, and
living events that happen under our eyes, offer a statement of the quick
and real with which beautiful dead things, embalmed in the amber of
memory, cannot cope.

"Sabina, at her best, never touched her, Miss Waldron."

"Sabina braids still in her spare time. Nobody makes better nets."

"This is a cousin of Sarah Roberts," explained the foreman. "Spinning
runs in the Northover family, and though Sarah is a spreader and never
will be anything else, there have been wondrous good spinners in the
clan. This girl is called Milly Morton, and her mother and grandmother
spun before her. Her father was Jack Morton, one of the last of the old
hand spinners. To see him walking backwards from his wheel, and paying
out fibre from his waist with one hand and holding up the yarn with the
other, was a very good sight. He'd spin very nearly a hundred pounds of
hemp in a ten hours' day, and turn out seven or eight miles of yarn, and
walk every yard of it, of course. The rope makers swore by him."

"I'm sure spinning runs in the blood!" agreed Estelle. "Both Sarah's
little girls are longing for the time