'God forbid that any life has been lost! Let me know what it is as soon as you know. I can't leave the mills till father comes back, and I don't know that I shall even then. I think I'm wanted here.'
'I wish I could be there with you!' exclaimed Sarah.
'You've got to stay where you are and look after mother. How is she?' inquired George.
'She's all right. At least, she sits quite quietly, and says it's God's will, and that she doesn't care as long as she has all of us. But it's very dull here. Women always do have the dull work to do in this world,' observed Sarah.
'They think they have; but I don't think you'd be much better off here; it's not particularly lively being with a lot of sulky foreigners who won't talk to you.'
'How can they if they're foreigners?' protested Sarah.
'They can talk French all right, some of them; but they won't answer me in their own language,' said George.
'I dare say they don't understand your French,' said Sarah.
But George declined to notice this insulting remark. Sarah was evidently called away from the telephone, and ring as he might he could get no answer from her or any one at Howroyd's. He tried to get on to the office, but was told that Howroyd's was 'playing,' as they say in the north country, because the most of the men were at Balmoral. So there was nothing for it but to possess his soul in patience, and watch the men at their dinner-hour eating bacon and haricot beans, and a kind of soup made out of George could not imagine what, seeing that the cooks had no vegetables to make it with, and drinking wine and water.
'They seem to enjoy their food,' George remarked to Ben the gate-keeper.