Then one of the girls—it was Nelly—stopped, and leaned back in her chair, with her hand to her heart; the work fell from her lap upon the floor; she sprang to her feet, threw up her hands, and fell in a lifeless heap upon the floor. The other girl went on with her sewing; and the cripple went on swinging backward and forward. For they were all three so miserable that the misery of one could no more touch the other two.
The curtain dropped. The tableau represented, of course, the girls who work for an employer.
After five minutes it rose again. There were the same girls and others; they were sitting at work in a cheerful and well-furnished room; they were talking and laughing. The clock struck six, and they laid aside their work, pushed back the table and advanced to the front singing all together. Their faces were bright and happy; they were well dressed, they looked well fed; there was no trouble among them at all; they chatted like singing-birds; they ran and played.
Then Captain Sorensen came in with his fiddle, and first he played a merry tune, at the sound of which the girls caught each other by the waist, and fell to dancing the old Greek ring. Then he played a quadrille, and they danced that simple figure, and as if they liked it; and then he played a waltz, and they whirled round and round.
This was the labor of girls for themselves. Everybody understood perfectly what was meant without the waste of words. Some of the mothers present wiped their eyes and told their neighbors that this was no play acting, but the sweet and blessed truth; and that the joy was real, because the girls were working for themselves and there were no naggings, no fines, no temper, no bullying, no long hours.
After this there was a concert, which seemed a falling off in point of excitement. But it was pretty. Captain Sorensen played some rattling sea ditties; then Miss Kennedy and Mr. Goslett played a duet; then the girls sang a madrigal in parts, so that it was wonderful to hear them, thinking how ignorant they were six months before. Then Miss Kennedy played a solo, and then the girls sang another song. By what magic, by what mystery, were girls so transformed? Then the audience talked together, and whispered that it was all the doing of that one girl—Miss Kennedy—who was believed by everybody to be a lady born and bred, but pretended to be a dressmaker. She it was who got the girls together, gave them the house, found work for them, arranged the time and duties, and paid them week by week for shorter hours better wages. It was she who persuaded them to spend their evenings with her instead of trapesing about the streets, getting into mischief; it was she who taught them the singing, and all manner of pretty things; and they were not spoiled by it, except that they would have nothing more to say to the rough lads and shopboys who had formerly paid them rude court and jested with them on Stepney Green. Uppish they certainly were; what mother would find fault with a girl for holding up her head and respecting herself? And as for manners, why, no one could tell what a difference there was.
The Chartist looked on with a little suspicion at first, which gradually changed to the liveliest satisfaction.
"Dick," he whispered to his friend and disciple, "I am sure that, if the working-men like, they may find the swells their real friends. See, now we've got all the power; they can't take it from us; very good then, who are the men we should suspect? Why, those who've got to pay the wages—the manufacturers and such. Not the swells. Make a note of that, Dick. It may be the best card you've got to play. A thousand places such as this—planted all about England—started at first by a swell—why, man, the working classes would have not only all the power but all the money. Oh, if I were ten years younger! What are they going to do next?"
The next thing they did pleased the women, but the men did not seem to care much about it, and the Chartist went on developing the new idea to Dick, who drank it all in, seeing that here, indeed, was a practical and attractive idea even though it meant a new departure. But the preacher of a new doctrine has generally a better chance than one who only hammers away at an old one.