fully plain as yet: "It is quite a serious thing for her, because
she can make more at the Works than anywhere else--she's a born buncher.
And she and her mother are dependent on her earnings. It seems a--a
great hardship that she should be thrown out this way, without any fault
of her own...."

"Put-on-your-hat!" ordered Hen, _sotto voce_; and again repressed
further remarks seething within her.

The slum doctor, having neglected Hen's injunction hitherto, now obeyed
it, though with inattention to the processes. He continued speaking,
blind to all discouragements.... Would no one stop the God's fool,
rushing with eager eyes to his doom?...

"I don't, of course, like to trouble you. But don't you think you could
stop a moment, and say just a word to MacQueen--or to your father if he
is in?..."

Now was the moment to demolish the irrepressible fanatic, who seemed
incapable of understanding that his betters wanted none of him. And
strange, oh, strange!--Cally Heth sat silent.... As the man reached the
climax of his madness, the girl's hard challenging gaze, as if by some
miracle of his ministering angels, had suddenly wavered and broken. Her
eyes flitted from his face, rested fixedly on a hideous sprawling pile
on the corner ahead, an abode of trade exceptionally repellent to all
the senses. However, she was unaware of the detestable object, so
confused was she by the odd frustrating weakness that suddenly possessed
her, staying her hand in the act of delivering the mace-blow. It might
be the very superlativeness of the man's temerity that disarmed her,
paralyzing the hot will. It might be merely that ludicrous trusting look
in his eyes, which somehow seemed to put him in the non-combatant class,
like some confiding child....

"I know, of course," he was concluding with unfaltering expectancy, "a
word from you will make everything right at once."

And Carlisle, her glance returning toward him, but not to him, heard
with disquiet and mortification her own voice saying, not indignantly
at all:

"You will have to speak to my father about it if--if injustice has been
done. I--I haven't time to go to the Works now--"

"Time!" cried Hen Cooney, at last assuming control of things. "Why, good
heavens, Cally! It wouldn't take us any _time_! We're right there
now!--and don't you think Uncle Thornton _ought_ to be told how that
brute's behaved ..."

Hen intended only an argument; but it happened that her explosive
statem