'Oh, are we going straight home? I thought we could, perhaps, go to Fountains Abbey to-day, and you would come with us?' cried Horatia.
Sarah shot a quick look of surprise at her friend, who added, 'You said I might choose what I liked best to do every day, didn't you, Sarah?'
'Of course,' said Sarah.
'But, my dear, w'yever didn't you mention it before we started? We would 'ave taken a picnic-basket along wi' us,' cried Mrs Clay.
'That doesn't matter, Polly; send Fox for it while we're looking over the mills. That's a good idea of the lass. We'll all go to Fountains. Do you go and telephone to them to put in plenty of champagne and lemonade for the girls,' said the mill-owner boisterously.
Mrs Clay hurried off to the telephone to give her directions, while Mark Clay started with the two girls over the mills.
'I couldn't write an essay on this,' said Horatia, as they were hurried through yard after yard, on each side of which were doors which the millionaire just ordered to be opened, and into which they gave a peep as he told them, 'In there there's thousands of pounds' worth of rags and wool for blankets,' or 'cloth,' as the case might be.
'My father doesn't want you to; he only wants you to see what a huge business he has. I hope he has succeeded,' said Sarah.
Horatia was saved the trouble of answering, for they now entered the room where the machinery drowned every sound. 'Doesn't it make them deaf or make their heads ache?' she shouted at length to Mark Clay.
'Make me deaf? No fear; I don't stop in here long enough,' he replied, misunderstanding her, and not imagining it was the workpeople she was thinking of.