"Sometimes the yarn's always snarling and your drag weights are always
burning off and the stuff is full of kinks and the sliver's badly pieced
up--that's the drawing minder's fault--and a bad drawing minder means
work for me. Your niece, Sarah, is a very good drawing minder, Mrs.
Northover. Then you'll get ballooning, when the thread flies round above
the flier, and that means too little strain on the jamb and the bobbin
has got to be tempered. And often it's too hot, or else too cold, for
hemp and flax must have their proper temperature. But to-day my machine
is as good and kind as a nice child, that only asks to be fed and won't
quarrel with anybody."

Mrs. Northover, however, saw nothing to praise, for Sabina's speech had
been broken a dozen times.

"If that's what you call working kindly, I'd like to see the wretch in a
nasty mood," she said. "I lay you want to slap it sometimes."

Sabina was mending a drag that had burned off. The drags were heavy
weights hanging from strings that pressed upon the side of the bobbins
and controlled their speed. The friction often burned these cords
through and the weights had to be lifted and retied again and again.

"We want a clever invention to put this right," she said. "A lot of good
time's wasted with the weights. Nobody's thought upon the right thing
yet."

"I'm properly dazed," confessed Nelly Northover. "You live and learn
without a doubt--nothing's so true as that."

Her niece had seen her and approached, as the machinery began to still
for the dinner-hour.

"Morning, Sarah. Can you do such wonders as Miss Dinnett?" she asked.

"No, Aunt Nelly. I'm a spreader minder. But I'll be a spinner some day,
if Mr. Roberts likes for me to stop, here after I'm married."

"Sarah would soon learn to spin," declared Sabina.

Then she turned to bid Raymond Ironsyde good morning. His brother was
away from Bridport on a tour with one of his travellers, that he might
become acquainted with many of his more important customers. Raymond,
therefore, felt safe and was wasting a good deal of his time. He had
brought a basket of fruit from North Hill House--a present from
Estelle--and he began to dispense plums and pears as the women streamed
away to dinner.

They knew him very well now and treated him with varying degrees of
familiarity. Early doubts had vanished, and they took him as a good
natured, rather 'soft' young man, who meant well and was friendly and
harmless. The ill-ed