Crabb Lane during working hours had hitherto been given over to the children, who danced in the gutters and cried and screamed themselves hoarse. Women also would be out of doors, idling away their time in gossip, or else calling across to each other from the windows. But now, as I and Tod went down it, things looked different. Instead of women and children, men were there. Every individual man, I believe, out of every house the lane contained; for there appeared to be shoals of them. They lounged idly against the walls, or stood about in groups. Some with pipes, some without; some laughing and jeering, apparently in the highest spirits, as if they had climbed the tree of fortune; some silent and anxious-looking.
“Well, Hoar, how are you?”
It was Tod who spoke. The man he addressed, Jacob Hoar, was one of the best of the workmen: a sober, steady, honest fellow, with a big frame and a resolute face. He had the character of being fierce in temper, sometimes savage with his fellow-men, if put out. Alfred Hoar—made pointsman at the station in poor Harry Lease’s place—was his brother.
Hoar did not answer Tod at all. He was standing quite alone near the door of his house, a strangely defiant look upon his pale face, and his firm lips drawn in. Unless I was mistaken, some of the men over the way were taking covert glances at him, as though he were a kangaroo they had to keep aloof from. Hoar turned his eyes slowly upon us, took off his round felt hat, and smoothed back his dark hair.
“I be as well as matters’ll let me be, young Mr. Todhetley,” he then said.
“There’s a strike going on, I hear,” said Tod. “Has been for some time.”
“Yes, there’s a strike a-going on,” assented Hoar, speaking in a deliberate, sullen manner, as a man resenting some special grievance. “Has been for some time, as you say. And I don’t know when the strike ’ll be a-going off.”
“How is Eliza?” I asked.
“Much as usual, Mr. Johnny. What should ail her?”
Evidently there was no sociability to be got out of Jacob Hoar that afternoon, and we left him. A few yards further, we passed Ford’s, the baker’s. No end of heads were at the shop door, and they seemed to be staring at Hoar.