movements of flying bands and wheels and squat masses of machinery that
convulsed and heaved and palpitated round him. From nearly all the
machines there streamed away continuous bright ribbons of hemp or flax,
that caught the light and shone. This was the 'sliver,' the wrought,
textile material passing through its many changes before it came to the
spinners. The amber and lint-white coils of the winding sliver made a
brightness among the duns and drabs around them and their colour was
caught again aloft where whisps of material hung irregularly--lumps of
waste from the ends of the bobbins--and there were also colour notes of
warmth in the wooden wheels on many of the machines. These struck a
genial tone into the chill greys and flash of polished steel on every
side.

After the mechanical activity, movement came from the irregular actions
of the workers. Forty women and girls laboured here, and while some old
people only sat on stools by the spouting sliver and wound it away into
the tall cans that received it, other younger folk were more intensively
engaged. The massive figure of Sally Groves lumbered at her ministry,
where she fed the Carding Machine. She was subdued to the colour of the
hemp tow with which she plied it. Elsewhere Sarah Northover flashed the
tresses of long lines over her head and seemed to perform a rhythmic
dance with her hands, as she tore each strick into three and laid the
shining locks on her spread board. Others tended the drawers and rovers,
while Sabina Dinnett, Nancy Buckler and Alice Chick, whose high task it
was to spin, seemed to twinkle here, there and everywhere in a
corybantic measure as they served the shouting and insatiable monsters
that turned hemp and flax to yarn.

They, indeed, specially attracted Raymond, by the activity of their work
and the charm of their swift, supple figures, where, never still, they