"We have got about ten or eleven of the younger women to join; none of the old ones will come," said Marcella. "Lady Winterbourne has heard of a capital teacher from Dunstable, and we hope to get started next week. There is money enough to pay wages for three months."
In spite of her fatigue, her eye was bright and restless. The energy of thought and action from which she had just emerged still breathed from every limb and feature.
"Where have you got the money?"
"Mr. Raeburn has managed it," said Marcella, briefly.
Mrs. Boyce gave a slight shrug of the shoulders.
"And afterwards—what is to become of your product?"
"There is a London shop Lady Winterbourne knows will take what we make if it turns out well. Of course, we don't expect to pay our way."
Marcella gave her explanations with a certain stiffness of self-defence. She and Lady Winterbourne had evolved a scheme for reviving and improving the local industry of straw-plaiting, which after years of decay seemed now on the brink of final disappearance. The village women who could at present earn a few pence a week by the coarser kinds of work were to be instructed, not only in the finer and better paid sorts, but also in the making up of the plait when done, and the "blocking" of hats and bonnets—processes hitherto carried on exclusively at one or two large local centres.
"You don't expect to pay your way?" repeated Mrs. Boyce. "What, never?"
"Well, we shall give twelve to fourteen shillings a week wages. We shall find the materials, and the room—and prices are very low, the whole trade depressed."