“Good powers, no! I’m not one to tell my troubles—you know that, or ought to. I’m a proud woman, whatever you may be. It isn’t personal things, but general questions that bother him. Poverty and want and injustice, and all that. I cheered him up, and tried to make him forget.” “He’ll do better to leave such subjects alone,” said Dingle. “The woes of the world in general ain’t his job; and if he tries to make them his job, he may find it won’t pay him to do so.” “That’s your pettifogging opinion; but if every man in good employment was as selfish as you, the poor might remain poor for ever,” she answered. “Well, don’t you be a fool, anyway, there’s a dear. You’ve got to look after me, not the poor in general. And nobody can look after me better than you, when you please. It’s a choice between beer and tea this minute, so choose which I’m to have.” “Tea,” she said. “If you can be patient for a little.” They went in together, and he was pleased to find Medora amiable and willing, though ignorant that her good temper sprang not from his inspiration. CHAPTER VII THE BLUE MARK From the rag house, through trap doors, the rag descended from Lydia and her fellow workers to a huge object like a mowing machine. The rags came to this monster and passed through its whirling knives. Then, having been clipped pretty small, they were carried on an endless ribbon up again to the magnet. Two great magnetized rollers revolved, and, in a dingy niagara, every fraction of the old rag tumbled over them, to run an electric gauntlet and receive a challenge. The bossy rollers were even quicker than the women’s fingers, and a fraction of metal, however small, responded to their attraction instantly. There was a click and instead of falling with its neighbours, the offending rag found itself arrested and pilloried on a boss. It clung to the roller, and, as the cylinder turned, became de-magnetized again and fell in a place apart. The danger to future processes was thus lessened materially and but little foreign matter in shape of metal escaped to be a nuisance later on. To the duster then came the harassed rag and in open wire barrels amid revolving wooden prongs it was whirled round and round and further cleansed. Then to Henry Barefoot it went, and Henry always declared that in his hands the material received first serious treatment. “The rag don’t know it’s born till it gets to the boilerman,” he was wont to say.