"O yes, indeed! if you will let me. And Rosy?"
"We will go nowhere without Rosy."
Diana made her cake like one in a dream.
CHAPTER XXXV.
BABYLON.
The journey to Mainbridge, the manufacturing town in question, took place within a few days. With eager cordiality the minister and his family were welcomed in the house of one of the chief men of the church and of the place, and made very much at home. It was a phasis of social life which Diana had hardly touched ever before. Wealth was abounding and superabounding; the house was large, the luxury of furnishing and fitting, of service and equipage, was on a scale she had never seen. Basil was amused to observe that she did not seem to see it now; she took it as a matter of course, and fitted in these new surroundings as though her life had been lived in them. The dress of the minister's wife was very plain, certainly; her muslins were not costly, and they were simply made; yet nobody in the room looked so much dressed as she. It was the dignity of her beauty that so attired her; it was beauty of mind and body both; and both made the grace of her movements and the grace of her quiet so exquisite as it was. Basil smiled—and sighed.
But there was no doubt Diana saw the mill people. The minister and his wife were taken to see the mills, of course, divers and various—silk mills, cotton mills, iron mills. The machinery, and the work done by it, were fascinating to Diana and delightful; the mill people, men, women, and children, were more fascinating by far, though in a far different way. She watched them in the mills, she watched them when she met them in the street, going to or from work.
"Do they go to church?" she asked once of Mr. Brandt, their entertainer. He shook his head.
"They are tired with their week's work when Saturday night comes, and want to rest. Sunday was given for rest," he said, looking into Diana's face, which was a study to him.
"Don't you think," she said, "rest of body is a poor thing without rest of mind?"