ly, and everybody else seems to, too. All the
people in his mill do, anyhow; they all looked glad to see him when he
went into their part.'

Mark Clay scowled. 'Ay, it's cheap popularity, is Bill Howroyd's; but
it's bad policy and bad business. If you let sentiment come into your
business you pretty soon have no business left for it to come into.'

No one made any comment upon these remarks, and the millionaire went on
in his harsh, dictatorial tones: 'Business is business, say I, and you've
got to keep your people under. I'm not making blankets and cloth to
please them, nor from philanthropy. I'm doing it to make money, and the
man that can make the most money for me I keep, and the one that doesn't
make enough goes, and the sooner the better.' And he gave another laugh.

Mark Clay had been eating between his sentences, and had his eyes upon
his plate, or he would have noticed Horatia's face. He gave a start of
surprise when she said, with indignation in her voice, 'What a horrid,
hard-hearted way to talk! I think Mr Howroyd's way is ten thousand times
better.'

Poor little Mrs Clay trembled, and even Sarah grew pale at the thought of
the storm Horatia had brought down upon her devoted head.

Mark Clay stared at this girl who presumed to call him horrid and
hard-hearted, and to hold up as an example his bugbear and opponent, Bill
Howroyd. Horatia returned his look with a perfectly fearless one. 'So you
prefer Bill Howroyd's way? Perhaps you prefer his home to mine? He'll
never build himself a Balmoral,' said the millionaire with a sneer.

'No; but he'll have a mansion up in heaven, and perhaps that's what he's
thinking of,' said Horatia.

Sarah looked at Horatia in amazement, and Mrs Clay looked anxiously at
her husband, as if imploring him not to be hard on this daring child; but
Mark Clay was not taking any notice of any one, not even of Sykes, who,
to divert his attention from this dangerous conversation, was pressing
some delicacy upon his master, who was staring moodily in front of him.

Horatia had little idea that she had quoted his mother--William Howroyd's
mother's last words to her sons, for they had had the same mother, though
their fathers had been very different: 'I've been very happy here; but I
am going to a better mansion up in heaven. Be sure and join me there,
lads,' she had said.

'Ay, there's something in what you've said, my lass,' observed the
millionaire after a pause, which seemed an et