She might have reconciled herself to the mine. There were Dukes, like the Duke of Bridgewater, who owned coal-mines and her Edward might have gained great honor, like that Duke, by developing canals. But she had not moved with the times about factories, nor, indeed, had the times, that is, her order of the old gentry, moved very far. The Secombes were still exceptional, the Luke Verners still trimmers, land was still land and respectable, steam was steam and questionable, and it is to be supposed that though the coal of the Duke was used to make steam, coal was land and therefore on the side of the angels, whatever the devils did with it afterwards. Prejudice, in any case, has nothing to do with consistency. She had no prejudice against Reuben’s connection with the factory; he was her “steam-man” still, but she did not want Edward to be her steam-son. Edward himself was conscious of no talent for factory owning and hardly of being the son of a factory owner. The management of her children’s lives was in Dorothy’s hands, involving no mention of the factory, and in her hands Reuben was content to leave their lives until his sons had had the ordinary education of gentlemen, until they were down from their Universities. He had not suffered himself as a manufacturer because he was educated as a gentleman and saw no reason to bring up his sons any differently from himself. Throw them too young into the factory, and they would become manufacturers and manufacturers only: he had the wish to make them gentlemen first and manufacturers afterwards. Edward had ideas of his own about his future, and it came as a surprise to be invited at breakfast to visit the factory one day during vacation from Oxford. Instinctively he glanced, not at his mother, but at his clothes. He was not precisely a dandy, but had money to burn and burned a good deal of it at his tailor’s. “The factory, I said, not the coal-mine,” Reuben said, noting his son’s impulse. “You have looked at your clothes. Now let us go and look at the first cause of the clothes. As a young philosopher you should be interested in first causes.” “Oh, is it necessary, Reuben?” pleaded Dorothy. “Sparks should know where the flames come from,” said Reuben. “I have great curiosity to see the factory, sir,” said Edward. “I showed surprise, but that was natural. You have hidden the factory from us all as if it were a Pandora’s box and if you judge the time now come when I am to see the place from which our blessings come, I assure you I am flattered by your confidence. But I warn you I am not persuaded in advance to admire the box.” Reuben smiled grimly at his hinted opposition. “If you look with sense, you will admire,” he said. “Factories run to usefulness, not beauty. Shall we go?”