Mr. Best allowed his mind to peep from the shell that usually concealed it.
"If he did, he was one man in a thousand. He married a Weymouth woman and Flossy went into the river—in the deep pool beyond the works. A clever sort of girl, but a dreamer you might say."
"I'd like to have had the handling of that devil!"
"You never know. She may have had what's better than a wedding ring—in happy dreams. Reality's not the best of life. People do change their minds. He was honest and all that. Only he found somebody else he liked better."
At this moment Daniel Ironsyde came into the works, and while John Best hastened to him, Raymond pursued his amusement and studied the wall by the spinning frame where Sabina Dinnett worked. He found a photograph of her mother and a quotation from Shakespeare torn off a calendar for the date of August the third. He guessed that might be Sabina's birthday. The quotation ran:—
"To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
There was no male in Sabina's picture gallery—indeed, no other picture but that of a girl—her fellow spinner, Nancy Buckler.
His brother approached Raymond.
"You've made a start, Ray?"
"Rather. It's jolly interesting. Best is wonderful, but he can't fathom my ignorance yet."