Myles sat upon his high stool in the background, and watched, while Wilson and his assistant paid out the wages. It was rather a dingy-looking crowd that he saw, and was apparent to nose, as well as to eye, by the unmistakable odour of oil and fluff which emanated from it. Bare-armed girls with long, greasy pinafores, loud voices, and ungainly gestures, elbowing their way through the lads, and exchanging with them chaff of the roughest description. Small, pale, stunted-looking men; sometimes downright hideously ugly and mean-looking, or again, only sallow, pale, and subdued by a sedentary occupation, with here and there a tremendous massive brow; here and there a pair of eyes so deep and glowing as to cause a shock and thrill to one who encountered them; here a mouth of poetical delicacy and sensitiveness; there a jaw so strong and heavy, that, comparing it with the eyes, brows, and mouths before spoken of, one no longer felt cause for surprise in hearing such aphorisms as ‘Manchester rules England,’ ‘What Lancashire thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow.’ It was, taken all in all, an ugly crowd, but in its way a commanding one. It might have moved the soul of a ‘Corn-Law Rhymer,’ a Gerald Massey, a ‘Lancashire Lad;’ it would probably have been repulsive to more refined bards and writers, and the poet of the brush and canvas would have found absolutely nothing here with which to gladden his eye. Myles, a striking exception to almost every one of the men in point of good looks and fine physical development, if not in point of intelligent expression, sat upon his stool; and his monotonous whistle continued as he scanned the faces, and returned a nod here and there. Many a girl looked at him, and smiled her brightest as she caught his grave eyes. He was not quite like the other workmen in more things than beauty, and a somewhat higher position, and none knew that better than the workwomen. The smiles and amiable looks provoked little answer. Myles was not rude to girls; he never chaffed them in the rough manner of some of his fellow-workmen; but, on the other hand, he very seldom took any notice of them at all, having very little to say to any young woman out of his own family.