my father, and I cannot say I have been very fond of it. I do not like England, and on the Continent one hears unpleasant things of English manufacturing towns. I think," smiling a little for the tirst time, "that one always associates them with 'strikes' and squalid people."
"There is not much danger of strikes here," he replied. "I give my chaps fair play and let 'em know who's master."
"But they have radical clubs," she said, "and talk politics and get angry when they are not sober. I've heard that much already."
"They don't talk 'em in my place," he answered, dogmatically.
He was not quite sure whether it relieved him or not when Ffrench entered at this moment and interrupted them. He was more at his ease with Ffrench, and yet he felt himself at a disadvantage still. He scarcely knew how the night passed. A feverish unrest was upon him. Sometimes he hardly heard what his entertainer said, and Mr. Ffrench was in one of his most voluble and diffuse moods. He displayed his knowledge of trade and mechanics with gentlemanly ostentation; he talked of "Trades' Unions" and the master's difficulties; he introduced manufacturer's politics and expatiated on Continental weaknesses. He weighed the question of demand and supply and touched on "protective tariff."
"Blast him," said Haworth, growing bitter mentally, "he thinks I'm up to naught else, and he's right."
As her father talked Miss Ffrench joined in but seldom. She listened and looked on in a manner of which Haworth was conscious from first to last. The thought made its way into his mind, finally, that she looked on as if these matters did not touch her at all and she was only faintly
