Guy. Well, as it happened, you're so far wrong that I'd no intention of coming in at all, only I was going home from a walk (_glancing away, as if after Ruth_), and met him on his way here. Matthew (_to Ephraim_). Mr. Barlow, it isn't _your_ wish that I---- Ephraim. Well, Matt, we've had complaints. (_Querulously._) Weavers nowadays are a grumbling, discontented lot, and---- Matthew. Aye. Power-loom weavers are, and have cause to be. Before you started factories folk could save. It was a saying here that every man in the valley owned his own house and the one next door to it. Epiiraim. They complain I make a favourite of you, and, as Guy says, we must have uniformity. It's just a point of discipline. Matthew. Yes, I know what discipline means. Discipline means ringing them into your factory at five in the morning and out at seven in the evening, and uniformity means fifty looms in rows all tied to a steam engine and every loom weaving the same pattern. Guy. Look here, Butterworth, you were working when we came in. Working at nine o'clock at night. Matthew. Do I complain of that? Not me. I can please myself what hours I work. It's nowt to me what time the engine stops. My engine's here. (_Indicating his arms._) Guy. Yes, and because it is, you never let it rest. Come into the factory and you've finished at seven. Matthew. I'm _sent_ away at seven. I'm under orders. I'm my own master here, Mr. Guy, and have been all my life. If I want to work, I work, and if I want to play, I play, and there's nobody to stop me, whether it's tramping over the moors getting my mind choke full of the new designs that come to me when I'm walking through the green, resting my eyes, or whether it's a cock-fight and a bellyful of ale--and you've no need to look shocked neither, Mr. Barlow, for I've seen time afore you got meddling with machines when you went cock-fighting yourself, and you weren't too big in those days to drink with me, too. And now you're telling me to come and weave in factory. Ephraim. Oh, nay, Matt, I'm not. Matthew. Well, I don't know. You've stood there and heard him tell me I'm to come in. Ephraim. But not as weaver, Matt. Matthew. What then? Ephraim. As overlooker, and not a man in Lancashire that's better fitted for it. Matthew (_soberly weighing it_). Aye. That's no more than truth. Ephraim. I'm not flattering. I'm a business man, and I'm choosing the best man for the job. Matthew. And I'm refusing it, for I'm a business man and I've got a better job. I've an old loom in yonder and as long as she hangs together I'll go on weaving cloth as cloth should be woven, by the skilful hand of a man to designs of his own contriving. To hell with uniformity. There's beauty in a loom and nowt but beastly ugliness in a row of looms. Guy (_coldly_). Where do you get your yarn from, Butter-worth? Matthew. Why, from you. Guy. And you've been selling your cloth to us? Matthew. Yes. Guy. We can take no more.