“Tell them I wish it,” returned Christopher simply. “It’s only an hour to closing time, but it will steady them down.”
He went back to the motor car he had been on the point of entering not fifteen minutes ago, and they made a lane for him to pass through, following him with their eyes till the gate closed behind him. The foreman stood on the steps of the office and gave the order to resume work. Not a man moved.
“It’s Mr. Aston’s wish,” he shouted, “if you’ve got any heart in you to show him what you feel, you’ll attend to it.”
The crowd swayed and broke up, melted once more into units, who disappeared their several ways. The head foreman wiped his forehead and went into the office.
Outside the ante-room to Christopher’s private office the glass was strewn on the pathway, and that was the only sign in the mill yard of what had occurred.
Christopher found a group already assembled round 362
Ann Barty’s cottage. They drew back from him with curious eyes.
“Is anyone with her?” he asked, his hand on the latch.
“Mrs. Toils and Jane Munden, what’s her sister,” said a woman, eagerly seizing a chance of a speaking part in this drama of life and death.
Christopher went in. The mother was sitting dry-eyed and staring, her hands twisted in her coarse apron. She swayed to and fro with mechanical rhythm, and paid no heed at all to the two weeping women who kept up a flow of low-uttered sentences of well-meant but inadequate comfort. Christopher bent over her and took both her hands, neither remembering the other nor seeing aught but the mother with a burden of grief slowly dropping on her.