"Make haste in from the wet, Mr. Short," cried the house-wife from the window,[window,] "and bring the neighbours in with you for shelter till the shower is over. 'Tis a fine pelting spring shower."
And Mrs. Cooper set down the child at a chair which had no holes, while she hastily put out of sight her duster and brush, that Short's evident ill-humour might not be increased by the appearance of any preparation for cleaning.
"You are welcome, neighbours," said she to one after another, as their heads emerged from the darkness of the winding staircase. "Plenty of room: room for twice as many, the looms being all empty at this time. 'Tis a curious chance that the looms should be all four quiet at once; but----"
"It will be a more curious chance when they are all going again," observed Rogers, one of the neighbours.
"Aye, aye," replied old Short, "I, for one, have wove my last piece."
"Why, dear me, Mr. Short, have you got to saying that again? Only think how often you have said that, and, bless God! it has never come true."
"'Tis true enough now, however," he replied. "There is hardly a master that will give out a cane to-day. There's nothing doing, nor never will be, while those cursed French are on the face of the earth."
"I thought you told me there was no more fear of them? I thought you were delighted at what the government ordered about the lengths of their pieces,--that none should come here of the lengths that we knew they had woven? I remember you rubbed your hands over that news till the child laughed again."
"Aye, that sounded all very well; but government can't, or won't, prevent those goods coming, though they are prohibited. The French are as hard at work as ever, weaving silks of the new lengths, and the other goods are pouring in all along the coast, by means of the smugglers. There is more smuggled silk in the market now than ever was known before, and----"
"But it will soon be all sold and gone; and besides, in two months the law will let them in, so as to allow people to buy them fairly; and then there will be an end of the smuggling, they say."