The service was held in the weaving shed, the warping room not being large enough to hold all those who flocked to the meeting. For besides the mill hands at Wrigley Mill, it was known that a number of good folk from Diggle and Woolroad and Uppermill meant to attend the service, friends and well-wishers these of good old Jim. From Stanedge Top and Dig Lea and Harrop Green and Weakey and Harrop Edge and Tamewater right over the hill to Delph, Jim had hosts of friends, and not one to begrudge him his rise in the world. So when it was bruited abroad that this service was to be his farewell to Wrigley Mill, men and women, youths and maidens, wished to do him honour. And, of course, the girls were all agog to see our Ruth and Miriam. Jim had been somewhat of a general lover in the sense at least that he had ever had a hearty word and maybe a sly kiss for all the pretty lasses of the countryside; though I'd stake my life that no girl was ever wronged by Jim. It had been, indeed, a common jest against Jim that he was wedded to his old mother. Perhaps that was why the girls had so set their caps at him, for the French have a saying, I am told--and who should know a woman's ways better than the French, who seem to think of little else?--that if you run after the provoking creatures they run away, but if _you_ run away they'll e'en run after you. And Jim was popular with the mothers, too; for who so tender and gentle as he with the little mites that in those days used to come down the rough hill sides in rain and sleet and snow of the dark winter mornings to earn their few shillings to swell the slender income of the family. Was it not Jim who let them warm their frozen hands and numbed feet by the boiler fires, and Jim who cared their sodden skirts and hose, and dried them carefully in the drying-hoil, and Jim who carried many a weary little toddlekin home on his broad shoulders hushing its sobs and drying its tears with lumps of goodstuff, all dirty and sticky from being kept in his coat by the blazing, roaring fires, but still goodstuff. And Jim was popular with the men, too, for he had not scorned to take his pint and stand his corner like a man at all the hostelries of those parts; and though, to be sure, there had been a sad falling off in these respects since he had taken to tramping over Stanedge to Pole Moor, it was hoped that marriage would restore him to sanity and his accustomed ways.