"So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but—you understand!"
"All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.
When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and shirts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.
"It's better out of the draught."
Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the grindstone, and all hands looked up with their best smile at Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look like shy animals.
Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs. Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."
As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more tolerable to Mrs. Field.
"Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."
"Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to Field. He did not think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.
Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men turned face in eager expectancy.