"Will you sit, Harry? Or are you going at once to mother? She is a bit
anxious about you."

"I will sit with you half an hour, John. I want to talk with you. I am
very unhappy."

"Nay, nay! You don't look unhappy, I'm sure; and you have no need to
feel so."

"Indeed, I have. If a man hates his lifework, he is very likely to hate
his life. You know, John, that I have always hated mills. The sight of
their long chimneys and of the human beings groveling at the bottom of
them for their daily bread gives me a heartache. And the smell of them!
O John, the smell of a mill sickens me!"

"What do you mean, Harry Hatton?"

"I mean the smell of the vaporous rooms, and the boiling soapsuds, and
the oil and cotton and the moisture from the hot flesh of a thousand men
and women makes the best mill in England a sweating-house of this age of
corruption."

"Harry, who did you hear speak of cotton mills in that foolish way? Some
ranter at a street corner, I suppose. Hatton mill brings you in good,
honest money. I think little of feelings that slander honest work and
honest earnings."

"John, my dear brother, you must listen to me. I want to get out of this
business, and Eli Naylor and Thomas Henry Naylor will rent my share of
the mill."