“Do you not think, sir, as I am unknown in Whaley-Bridge, I might make inquiries, and ascertain the feeling of the people better if I went on foot, having no apparent connection with you?”
“That is a wise thought of yours, young man. Just so. I will put you down at the next milestone. Here is a guinea for your expenses at the ‘White Hart.’ But country people are inquisitive; what do you propose to be?”
“Well, sir, I took the liberty to bring a sketch-book with me—I don’t get many such opportunities—I could represent myself as an artist; or I could cram my pockets with plants and roots as I went along, and say I was a botanist in search of specimens.”
“Stick to the artist, Jabez; our country botanists would soon floor you on their own ground—they know more of plants than pencils, I’ll warrant.” And Mr. Ashton, handing the reins to Jabez, took a pinch of snuff on the strength of it.
Mr. Ashton, putting up the collar of his coat, drove direct to Carr, much to the surprise of his unprepared overlooker and wife, who had charge of the cottage. He said nothing of any companion; and Jabez some twenty minutes later walked into the bar of the “White Hart,” dusty and weary, as if with long walking; called for bread-and-cheese and ale; intimated his intention to remain the night, if he could have a bed; talked of the scenery, and led the host to tell of the best points for sketching.
Professing fatigue, he kept his seat in the bar-parlour the remainder of the day. The sling, not yet wholly discarded, drew attention, as he expected it would. The incomers, eyeing him askance, talked politics before him, and finding him less glib than themselves, whispered that he was a refugee from Peterloo, and, to show their sympathy with the party to which he was supposed to belong, freely discussed the political aspect of the district before him.
He was young, free with his money, and they were not reticent. He found that the overlooker had made himself, and his master through himself, obnoxious to his weavers, and that only prompt measures would prevent an outbreak.
The next morning Mr. Ashton put his head into the inn, greeted “Mr. Clegg” as some one he was surprised to meet in so remote a spot, and invited him to Carr Cottage.
Jabez accepted the invitation for the afternoon, saying he could not spare the morning. Under pretence of sketching, he took his way by the Goyt to the neighbourhood of the mill with pencils and sketch-book: women and children flocked inquisitively round him in their dinner-hour, and talked to him; then he rested in weaver’s cot, and when he found his way to Carr in the afternoon, and sat with Mr. Ashton for privacy under the dropping keys of the sycamore, he had brought with him the key to the prevailing discontent.
Mr. Ashton listened, took an enormous quantity of snuff, dropped an occasional “Just so,” and, knowing the sore, set about healing it. He drove back to Manchester, leaving Jabez as his temporary deputy—high honour for so young a man—and the overlooker was required to render up his accounts.