V. Vivian was hurrying on, as if perceiving that he hadn't made the matter fully plain as yet: "It is quite a serious thing for her, because she can make more at the Works than anywhere else--she's a born buncher. And she and her mother are dependent on her earnings. It seems a--a great hardship that she should be thrown out this way, without any fault of her own...."
"Put-on-your-hat!" ordered Hen, sotto voce; and again repressed further remarks seething within her.
The slum doctor, having neglected Hen's injunction hitherto, now obeyed it, though with inattention to the processes. He continued speaking, blind to all discouragements.... Would no one stop the God's fool, rushing with eager eyes to his doom?...
"I don't, of course, like to trouble you. But don't you think you could stop a moment, and say just a word to MacQueen--or to your father if he is in?..."
Now was the moment to demolish the irrepressible fanatic, who seemed incapable of understanding that his betters wanted none of him. And strange, oh, strange!--Cally Heth sat silent.... As the man reached the climax of his madness, the girl's hard challenging gaze, as if by some miracle of his ministering angels, had suddenly wavered and broken. Her eyes flitted from his face, rested fixedly on a hideous sprawling pile on the corner ahead, an abode of trade exceptionally repellent to all the senses. However, she was unaware of the detestable object, so confused was she by the odd frustrating weakness that suddenly possessed her, staying her hand in the act of delivering the mace-blow. It might be the very superlativeness of the man's temerity that disarmed her, paralyzing the hot will. It might be merely that ludicrous trusting look in his eyes, which somehow seemed to put him in the non-combatant class, like some confiding child....
"I know, of course," he was concluding with unfaltering expectancy, "a word from you will make everything right at once."
And Carlisle, her glance returning toward him, but not to him, heard with disquiet and mortification her own voice saying, not indignantly at all:
"You will have to speak to my father about it if--if injustice has been done. I--I haven't time to go to the Works now--"
"Time!" cried Hen Cooney, at last assuming control of things. "Why, good heavens, Cally! It wouldn't take us any time! We're right there now!--and don't you think Uncle Thornton ought to be told how that brute's behaved ..."
Hen intended only an argument; but it happened that her explosive statement sprang out like a switchman, finally shifting the train of the talk.