“Well, no,” he began, “that is really not reasonable”--But he stopped; this timid creature could not reason--she could only feel. “Fools,” he said to himself, as he left her, “rush in where the political economist fears to tread. She is a fool, poor little soul, but”-- The winter had passed heavily away. Mrs. Eaton had succeeded in getting a place in Mr. Davis’s shop--“where,” the proprietor used to say, “having Robert Blair’s sister for a saleslady is money in my pocket! She’s better than a ‘fire-and-water bargain sale.’” So she stood behind a counter and sold ribbon, and was stared at and whispered about. But she had very keen anxieties about food and clothes, and the children’s discontent lay like a weight upon the mother’s heart--which ached, too, with the pain of the second wrench from the affection and kindness of her family. Fortunately her peculiar logic did not lead her to reject the Baptist deacon’s money, which was certainly much more doubtful than her brother’s. By some mental process of her own, the fact that she worked for it seemed to make its acceptance moral. She had no leisure now to work for Mr. West; but the remembrance of his patience and gentleness always made a little pause of peace in her heavy thoughts. It was a hard, bleak life for this silent little creature; and the rector of St. James, himself a silent soul, watched her live it, and pondered many things. The strike had broken in February. The men went back to their work--defeat, like some bitter wind, blowing the flames of resentment into fiercer heat, which “next time” would mean destroying victory. “Will it be like Samson pulling down the temple upon himself?” William West wondered, depressed and hopeless. It was night--a summer night; sweet and still over in the old-fashioned part of Mercer, where the fragrance of roses overflowed the high brick walls of the gardens. Here in the mill district it was not sweet, and all night long the mills roared and crashed, and the flames bursting out of vast chimneys flared and faded, and flared again.