He was riding slowly through the village one morning when he met a neighbor with whom he had once been on intimate friendly terms. It was John Thomas Bradley, who had just built a large mill within three miles of Annis village and under the protecting power of the government had filled it with the latest power-looms and spinning jennies.
“Good morning, Annis!” he said cheerfully. “How dost tha do?”
“I do none the better for thy late doings. I can tell thee that!”
“Is tha meaning my new building?”
“Is tha ashamed to speak its proper name? It’s a factory, call it that. And I wouldn’t wonder, if tha hes been all through Annis, trying to get some o’ my men to help thee run it.”
“Nay, then. I wouldn’t hev a man that hes been in thy employ, unless it were maybe Jonathan Hartley. They are all petted and spoiled to death.”
“Ask Jonathan to come to thy machine shop. He wouldn’t listen to thee.”
“Well, then, I wouldn’t listen to his Chartist talk. I would want to cut the tongue out o’ his head. I would that! O Annis, we two hev been friends for forty years, and our fathers were hand and glove before us.”
“I know, Bradley, I know! But now thou art putting bricks and iron before old friendship and before all humanity; for our workers are men, first-rate men, too—and thou knows it.”
“Suppose they are, what by that?”