‘I rather hoped you would come to-night, to do some German,’ said she, ‘but I did not think you would come so early.’ ‘We are working half-time. We began to-day,’ said Myles. ‘Half-time already? I thought there was such an enormous supply of cotton somewhere in the country.’ ‘So there is, somewhere; but it will have to be bought with a price before it can be got at. Lots of other places have begun half-time to-day. And it’s not only that cotton is dear; there must have come a reaction after last year’s over-production. It was tremendous. There is a bad time coming for the workers; but those who can afford to wait, and who know how to use their chances, will make some big fortunes.’ ‘Some others will lose them, I think.’ ‘Naturally. The one goes with the other.’ ‘But how will you all manage when the hard time comes?’ ‘We shall pull through,’ said poor short-sighted Myles, little dreaming of the depths of misery, and what he, and such as he--proud, honest, self-dependent men--considered deepest degradation, which lay in the not far-distant future. ‘We shall pull through. If it is only half-wage we get, we shall have to do with half-doings; pinch a bit, and clem a bit, and put on a good face.’ ‘But,’ said she gravely, ‘my uncle and Canon Ponsonby were saying the other night that the time must most likely come when there would be no work and no wages.’ ‘If the war lasts a long time, or the ports are very well blockaded, it may come to that,’ said Myles, calmly. ‘But we, and a good many others besides us, have money laid by. We must live on that till better times come.’ In six months from that time, thousands of working homes were stripped of every stick of furniture that could possibly be done without. Many a savings bank had collapsed. Many a stout-hearted toiler had to bend his proud, unwilling feet towards the relief committee, or the guardians, and, with burning face, and bursting heart and down-drooped head, tell his tale, and ask for ‘charity.’ Not yet had the ‘Lancashire Lad’ sent to the _Times_ that pathetic account of the shame-faced girls who stopped him to ask him, ‘Con yo help us a bit?’ that appeal which brought the tears to thousands of eyes of readers in every end of the earth. None of this had happened yet. The great ‘panic’ had not come swooping down upon the land; but it was not long before the cry of the distressed must go up. Myles Heywood, after this his first half-day’s enforced idleness, perhaps not ill-pleased to be freed for a few hours, on a fine afternoon, from his toil, said he had no fears for the future. He felt himself strong: felt that a little pinching and ‘clemming’ would do him no material harm, and smiled at the storm-cloud hurrying across the Atlantic.