Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/220

 "But it's out of doors," said Bessy. "And away from the endless, endless noise, and sickening heat."

"It's sometimes in heavy rain, and sometimes in bitter cold. A young person can stand it; but an old man gets racked with rheumatism, and bent and withered before his time; yet he must just work on the same, or else go to the workhouse."

"I thought yo were so taken wi' the ways of the South country."

"So I am," said Margaret, smiling a little, as she found herself thus caught. "I only mean, Bessy, there's good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair should know the bad down there."

"And yo say they never strike down there?" asked Nicholas abruptly.

"No!" said Margaret; "I think they have too much sense."

"An' I think," replied he, dashing the ashes out of his pipe with so much vehemence that it broke, "it's not that they've too much sense, but that they've too little spirit."

"O, father!" said Bessy, "what have ye gained by striking? Think of that first strike when mother died—how we all had to clem—you the worst of all; and yet many a one went in every week at the same wage, till all were gone in that there was work for; and some went beggars all their lives at after."

"Ay," said he. "That there strike was badly managed. Folk got into th' management of it, as were either fools or not true men. Yo'll see, it’ll be different this time."