They went slowly down the path along the mountain-side, breathing in deep drafts of the pure, sweet air, looking about with new delight on the beauties of hill and valley.
“Oh, Mr. Bayliss,” she burst out at last, “I never before quite realized what a good, beautiful world it is!”
“No,” he answered, smiling at her emotion and understanding it; “I think it would do most of us good to spend an hour in a coal-mine now and then, if only for the joy of coming out.”
“But to stay there!” she said, with a little shudder. “To labor there day after day—it is too horrible!”
“It is horrible,” he assented, quite grave now. “Yet it is difficult to see how it can be avoided. The world needs coal, just as it needs iron and lead and silver and many other things which must be dug up out of its depths.”
“But the world is so selfish!”
“Yes; it certainly rewards very poorly the men who do this labor for it. Yet I think that in a few more years mining will be no more dangerous than any other manual labor. Every year, almost, some new step is taken to lessen its dangers, and I believe I shall live to see the time when every mine will be lighted from end to end with electricity, and the hardest part of the work will be done by steam, or compressed air, or some other power.”
“Let us hope so, at least,” she said fervently, “and in the meantime—”
“Yes?”
“And in the meantime do all that we can to make up for the world’s selfishness.”