PROBATION [Illustration: J. Collier, px. C. O. Murray. Sc. ADRIENNE.] PROBATION A Novel BY JESSIE FOTHERGILL AUTHOR OF ‘THE FIRST VIOLIN,’ ‘KITH AND KIN,’ ETC. [Illustration] A NEW EDITION LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen 1887 _All rights reserved_ BOOK I. PRIDE AND PLENTY. [Illustration] CHAPTER I. OF AN ABSENTEE EMPLOYER. ‘The perfection of mechanism, human and metallic.’ You, at any rate, Lancashire reader, know this place; the large somewhat low room; the long lines of looms; the wheels, straps, and beams; the rows of standing work-people, men, women, and children; the dimness of the dust-laden atmosphere. You know, too, the roar of noise--how deafening, stunning, and overwhelming it is to the stranger who may happen casually to encounter it, yet how easily those in the habit of working in it can make themselves intelligible to one another. You know all this, and your accustomed eye recognises at once one division of the ‘weaving shed’ of a large cotton factory; which forms, with its perfect mechanism, the ‘metallic and the human,’ a most wonderful sight to any eyes but the too careless or the too accustomed. There is an air of calm, leisurely ease about the process which might be apt to lead the uninitiated astray, and make him suppose that not so much accuracy of eye, delicacy of manipulation, sensitiveness of touch, was required as is really the case. Which are the most alive--the girls in the cotton dresses, and the men in their fustian clothes, who move lightly to and fro, adjusting their work, keeping watch and ward over the flying shuttle; or that flying shuttle itself, which seems instinct with vitality, darting with vivid, almost oppressive, regularity of activity backwards and forwards--indulging sometimes in a malicious vagary, worthy of a human being, such as flying suddenly out from its groove, and perhaps striking its human fellow-worker a sharp blow on the forehead, or in the eye? It would be difficult to say--the definition at the head of the chapter forms also the best description of the whole--‘the perfection of mechanism, human and metallic.’ It was during the afternoon hours of work; the day’s labour was drawing to a close; the great ceaseless roar and buzz and rush seemed to grow rhythmic, harmonious in its monotonous continuity; through the thick-ribbed panes of glass, distorted yellow sunbeams came streaming, golden, hazy, smoky, dusty, striking here and there upon the face of some laughing or languid girl; here into the eyes of some lad--an imp of mischief--or a youth of thoughtful and serious aspect.