'That's right. I've ordered the Ousebank band up, and I met Bill down town, and asked him up. He says he can't rink, but he supposes you'll want some to admire you, so he's coming to do that part. He's a great admirer of Miss Horatia already, it appears.'
'I like him most awfully, and everybody else seems to, too. All the people in his mill do, anyhow; they all looked glad to see him when he went into their part.'
Mark Clay scowled. 'Ay, it's cheap popularity, is Bill Howroyd's; but it's bad policy and bad business. If you let sentiment come into your business you pretty soon have no business left for it to come into.'
No one made any comment upon these remarks, and the millionaire went on in his harsh, dictatorial tones: 'Business is business, say I, and you've got to keep your people under. I'm not making blankets and cloth to please them, nor from philanthropy. I'm doing it to make money, and the man that can make the most money for me I keep, and the one that doesn't make enough goes, and the sooner the better.' And he gave another laugh.
Mark Clay had been eating between his sentences, and had his eyes upon his plate, or he would have noticed Horatia's face. He gave a start of surprise when she said, with indignation in her voice, 'What a horrid, hard-hearted way to talk! I think Mr Howroyd's way is ten thousand times better.'
Poor little Mrs Clay trembled, and even Sarah grew pale at the thought of the storm Horatia had brought down upon her devoted head.
Mark Clay stared at this girl who presumed to call him horrid and hard-hearted, and to hold up as an example his bugbear and opponent, Bill Howroyd. Horatia returned his look with a perfectly fearless one. 'So you prefer Bill Howroyd's way? Perhaps you prefer his home to mine? He'll never build himself a Balmoral,' said the millionaire with a sneer.
'No; but he'll have a mansion up in heaven, and perhaps that's what he's thinking of,' said Horatia.
Sarah looked at Horatia in amazement, and Mrs Clay looked anxiously at her husband, as if imploring him not to be hard on this daring child; but Mark Clay was not taking any notice of any one, not even of Sykes, who, to divert his attention from this dangerous conversation, was pressing some delicacy upon his master, who was staring moodily in front of him.
Horatia had little idea that she had quoted his mother—William Howroyd's mother's last words to her sons, for they had had the same mother, though their fathers had been very different: 'I've been very happy here; but I am going to a better mansion up in heaven. Be sure and join me there, lads,' she had said.