He was then driven back, not unwillingly, on Dorothy. She was, for Reuben, the whole of friendship, the whole of companionship, the whole of love; after all, she was Dorothy and certainly he made no complaint that he had no other friends and that he was a tolerated, unpopular figure in society. His days were for the factory, his evenings for Dorothy and their children and, when the children had gone to bed, for Dorothy and his books. Books, though they were not unduly insisted upon in the country districts of Lancashire, went then with gentlemanliness and Reuben was not idiosyncratic, but normal, in becoming bookish in middle-age. In Parliament they quoted the classics in their speeches, and the Corinthian of the Clubs, whatever his sporting tastes, spared time to keep his classics in repair. Bookishness, in moderation, was part of the make-up of a man of taste, and for Reuben it had become a recourse not for fashion’s sake but for its own. Life for Reuben had its mellowness; he had struggled and he had won; he was owner and despot, hardly bound by any law but that of his will, of the several factories contained within the great wall, of a coal-mine, of the town of cottages and shops about. The conditions of labor were the usual conditions and they did not trouble his conscience. Things were, indeed, rather smoother for Hepplestall’s workers than for some others; he was above petty rent exactions and truck shops, as, being his own coal supplier, he could very well afford to be. What drawbacks there were to his position were rather in matters of decoration than reality, but it was decided proof of his unpopularity in both camps of influence that Hepplestall was not a magistrate. Other great manufacturers, to a man, were on the bench and took good care to be, because administration of the law was largely in the hands of the magistrates and the manufacturers wanted the administration in trusty hands--their own. It was a permanent rebuff to Reuben that he was not a magistrate; there were less wealthy High Sheriffs.