"Gracious, Hen! I'd no idea you had such a hospital. Why, what's the matter with Uncle John?"
"Oh, just his lumbago. He's complaining, but out and about--fighting over the Seven Days around Richmond with an old comrade somewhere, I doubt not.... Sit down, my dear," added Hen, who had been looking at Cally just a little curiously, "and excuse me while I run upstairs. I forgot to explain that this bottle is for mother, who's down with a splitting headache. Back in a jiffy...."
Thus Miss Cooney, not knowing that for one moment, at least, her society had been preferred above that of a Canning. Such was the odd little development. Carlisle, having been more with Henrietta in the past five weeks than she had commonly been in a year, had discovered her as undoubtedly a person you could talk things over with--the only person in the world, perhaps, that you could talk this over with....
Possibly Hen, being a lynx-eyed Cooney, had somehow gathered that her lovely cousin had not dropped in merely to "inquire"; for when she returned to the parlor, having doubtless put her hot-water bottle where it would do the most good, she did not expend much time on reporting upon her invalids, or become involved in the minor doings of the day. Very soon she deflected, saying:
"But you don't look particularly fit yourself, Cally. What's wrong with the world?"
Cally, being still uncertain how far she cared to confide in Hen, met the direct question with a tentative lightness.
"Oh!... Well, I did just have a rather unpleasant experience, though I didn't know I showed it in my face!... We happened to look in at the Works for a few minutes--Mr. Canning and I--and I certainly didn't enjoy it much ..." And then, the inner pressure overcoming her natural bent toward reserve, she spoke with a little burst: "Oh, Hen, it was the most horrible place I ever saw in my life!"
The little confidence spoke straight to the heart, as a touch of genuine feeling always will. Quite unconsciously, Henrietta took her cousin's hand, saying, "You poor dear ..." And within a minute or two Cally was eagerly pouring out all that she had seen in the bunching-room, with at least a part of how it had made her feel.
Hen listened sympathetically, and spoke reassuringly. If her "arguments" followed close in the footsteps of Hugo,--for Hen was surprisingly well-informed in unexpected ways,--it must have been some quality in her, something or other in her underlying "attitude," that invested her words with a new horsepower of solace. And Saltman's best stenographer actually produced an argument that Hugo had altogether passed by. She thought it worth while to point out that these things were not a question of abstract morals at all, but only of changing points of view....
"When Uncle Thornton learned business," declared Hen, "there wasn't a labor law in the country--no law but supply and demand--pay your work-people as little as you could, and squeeze them all they'd stand for. Nobody ever thought of anything different. In those days the Works would have been a model plant--nine-hour day, high wages, no women working at night, no children...."