Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/271



and her father walked home. The night was fine, the streets clean, and with her pretty white silk, like Leezie Lindsay's gown o' green satin, in the ballad, "kilted up to her knee," she was off with her father—ready to dance along with the excitement of the cool, fresh night air.

"I rather think Thornton is not quite easy in his mind about this strike. He seemed very anxious to-night."

"I should wonder if he were not. But he spoke with his usual coolness to the others, when they suggested different things, just before we came away."

"So he did after dinner as well. It would take a good deal to stir him from his cool manner of speaking; but his face strikes me as anxious."

"I should be, if I were he. He must know of the growing anger and hardly smothered hatred of his workpeople, who all look upon him as what the Bible calls a 'hard man,'—not so much unjust as unfeeling; clear in judgment, standing upon his