And Matthew Cooper’s last chance was gone.
Mr. Ashton was what is known in trade as a small-ware manufacturer—that is, he was a weaver of tapes, inkles, filletings; silk, cotton, and worsted laces (for furniture); carpet bindings, brace-webs, and fringes. Moreover, he manufactured braces and umbrellas, for which latter his brother-in-law supplied the ginghams. He had at work, both in Manchester and at Whaley-Bridge, a number of swivel-engines, the design of which came from those unrivalled tape-weavers, the Dutch, and which would weave twenty-four lengths of tape or bed-lace at one time. Otherwise, the bulk of his workpeople—winders, warpers, brace, fringe, and umbrella-makers—carried away materials to their own homes, and brought back their work in a finished state.
Mr. Chadwick, as we have mentioned, was a manufacturer of ginghams—this included checks and fustians; but much of his trade being foreign, the war had locked up his resources, and his anxieties preyed on his health.
Mr. Ashton had suffered less in this particular, not having disdained to take his sensible wife’s advice—“Never put too many eggs in one basket.” Mrs. Ashton, be it said, had a leaning towards “proverbial philosophy” more homely and terse than Tupper’s, which, vulgar as it is accounted now, was in esteem when our century was young; and, had it been otherwise, would have been equally impressive from her deliberately modulated utterance. This same lady had, moreover, an aptitude for business. Mr. Ashton employed a number of young women, and Mrs. Ashton might be found most days in the warehouse, either “putting out” or inspecting the work brought in by them, with a gingham wrapper over her “silken sheen.” If the footman announced visitors, the wrapper was thrown aside in a moment, and she stepped into her drawing-room as though fresh from her toilette, and with no atmosphere of dozens, grosses, or great-grosses about her.
She was wont to say, “The eye of a master does more work than both his hands,” accordingly in house or warehouse her active supervision kept other hands from idling, and she certainly dignified whatever duties she undertook, whether she used hands or eyes only.
In those days a seven-years’ apprenticeship to any trade or business was deemed essential; apprentices were part and parcel of commercial economy, and when Mr. Ashton spoke of “looking after that boy,” it was that he thought Jabez Clegg bade fair to be a fitter inmate and a more reliable servant than others whose terms were about to expire.
Through his friend the Rev. Joshua Brookes he ascertained the boy’s age and other particulars, and sought the House-Governor Mr. Terry, and laid before him a proposition to take Jabez Clegg as his apprentice, on very fair terms. He then learned that Mr. Shaw, the saddler at the bottom of Market Street-lane, was also desirous to obtain the same Blue-coat boy as an apprentice, his friend the leather-breeches maker having named the lad to him.
At the Easter meeting of feoffees both proposals were laid before them—Simon Clegg, as standing in loco parentis to Jabez, being present. After some little discussion Mr. Ashton’s proposal was accepted, to the great satisfaction of the tanner, and in a few days Jabez was transferred to his new master for mutual trial until Ascension Day, when, if all parties were satisfied, his indentures would be signed. As the governor said, it had “been but the toss of a button” whether he had gone to Mr. Shaw or Mr. Ashton:—yet upon that toss of a button the whole future of Jabez depended.
Jabez Clegg entered on his new career under good auspices—that is, he bore with him a good character for steadiness and probity, though nothing was said of brilliant parts, or any special talent which he possessed. Indeed his school-master had said that only his indomitable perseverence had enabled him to keep pace with others. If he had any latent genius, any particular vocation, no one had discovered it; his faculty for disfiguring doors and walls with devices in coloured chalks, picked up amongst the gravel, had been matter for punishment not praise, and none but the College boys themselves cared to know where the fresh patterns for purses and pincushions came from. Steadiness, perseverance, probity—they were good materials out of which to manufacture a tradesman (so Mr. Ashton thought), and congratulations were mutual.