“I nodded, for my heart seemed swelled unto bursting, and I could not speak.
“‘He looked upon the heart,’ sobbed Jenny; ‘and oh, Harry, I have tried to choose my king like that.’
“People call this world a vale of sorrows, and I pity those who always speak like that, for they can never have felt the happiness that was mine that night, as two fond arms clasped my neck, and a loving cheek was laid to mine, and they were those of her who has been my wife these fifteen happy years.
“I believe that there are those who think us a strangely-matched couple, and that our little ones all favour their mother; but they don’t know all, for my foolish little wife is even proud of her husband.”
“And well she may be!” I said to myself as I went away, thinking what a blot these trade outrages have been upon working-class history, and how generous stout-hearted men often allow themselves to be led away by the mouthing idlers of their workshops—by men who are constantly declaiming against their betters, and who want as they say for all to be free and equal, with as much sense as the child who cried for the moon.
Chapter Seven.
My Non-Striking Patient.
I had just such a man as my Sheffield grinder to tend once for a broken leg. Samuel Harris was his name, and a very bad fracture I had to deal with.