Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/197

 answer your question. Besides, it has nothing to do with the fact. You must take my word for it, that I have heard some people, or, it may be, only some one of the workpeople speak as though it were the interest of the employers to keep them from acquiring money—that it would make them too independent if they had a sum in the savings' bank."

"I dare say it was that man Higgins who told you all this," said Mrs. Hale. Mr. Thornton did not appear to hear what Margaret evidently did not wish him to know. But he caught it, nevertheless.

"I heard, moreover, that it was considered to the advantage of the masters to have ignorant workmen—not hedge-lawyers, as Captain Lennox used to call those men in his company who questioned and would know the reason for every order."

This latter part of her sentence she addressed rather to her father than to Mr. Thornton. Who is Captain Lennox? asked Mr. Thornton of himself, with a strange kind of displeasure, that prevented him for the moment from replying to her! Her father took up the conversation.

"You never were fond of schools, Margaret, or you would have seen and known before this, how much is being done for education in Milton."

"No!" said she, with sudden meekness. "I know I do not care enough about schools. But the knowledge and the ignorance of which I was speaking, did not relate to reading and writing,—the teaching or information one can give to a child. I am sure, that what was meant was ignorance of the wisdom that shall guide men and women. I hardly know what that is. But he—that is my informant—