Ruth. I'm getting fat. I'm like a pig. I never want to go out. The house is soft and warm and comfortable, and the sights I see outside are hard and cold and comfortless. Mary. You may well say that. Things go from bad to worse, With wages down and food up it's near impossible to make ends meet. And that's for us, with your father an overlooker. What it is for the weavers, I don't know. There's empty hearths and empty bellies this winter time. Ruth. I know. I know and I don't care. I used to care. Something's gone dead inside me, killed by the comfort and the ease and the good living and all the things I used to hate and despise until I had them for my own. Mary. Eh, don't you worry! When a lass has got a good husband same as you have it's little room she has in her mind for thoughts of other things. Ruth. That's my punishment. Guy's good to me. (_Changing tone._) Mother, I'll tell you something. I love my husband. Mary (_puzzled_). Well, don't tell me that as if it was news to me. What did you marry him for if you didn't love him? Ruth. I married him to use him for an instrument. And I don't care now for the things I cared for then. I only care for Guy, and what Guy does is right because he does it. Mary. Well, I never let your father come over me like that. But there's many wives do think that road of their husbands, especially young wives. I'm a bit surprised at you being one of them for all that, Ruth. You'd always a will of your own. Ruth. My will's asleep. Mary. Don't let it waken up too sudden. Ruth. No fear of that. I eat too much. Mary. There's a-many eat too little, Ruth. There was one you used to know came in to us the other night. He'd been short of food for weeks and looked it too, poor lad. Ruth. A friend of mine? What friend? Mary (_reluctantly_). Martin Kelsall, if you want to know. There was him and others. Friends of the People they call themselves, and your father's joined them now. I never heard such talk in my life. Proper wild it was. Drilling on the moors, and knocking out the engine boiler plugs and breaking the machinery and I don't know what. Ruth. And father, too? Mary. As savage as the worst of them, the silly old man. Got to threats before they'd done. Ruth. Threats? Mary. Against your Guy. It's him they're bitterest against. Ruth (_indignantly_). What's Guy done? Mary. You'd think there was nothing he hadn't done. You'd better tell him to be careful about going out at night. They've guns amongst them. Ruth. Guns! Mary. Oh, don't be frightened, lass. They won't _do_ owt. Men like to talk. I don't take any notice of them. If they said less I'd fear them more. Ruth. Has Martin Kelsall got a gun? Mary (_contemptuously_). Him! It's bread he wants, not a gun. Gave me a message for you, Martin did. Ruth. A message? Mary. "Tell her to remember me," he says. Ruth. I understand. What must he think of me? Mary. What right has he to think of you at all? Impudence I call it.