Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/116

Rh for such a reason! You must ﬁnd him for me at once—you must tell him"

Once more Amherst gently restrained her. “If you’ll forgive my saying so, I think it is better to let him go, and take his chance of getting work elsewhere. If he were taken back he might be made to suffer. As things are organized here, the hands are very much at the mercy of the overseers, and the overseer in that room would be likely to make it uncomfortable for a hand who had so openly deﬁed him.”

With a heavy sigh she bent her puzzled brows on him. “How complicated it is! I wonder if I shall ever understand it all. You don’t think Dillon’s accident was his own fault, then?”

“Certainly not; there are too many cards in that room. I pointed out the fact to Mr. Truscomb when the new machines were set up three years ago. An operative may be ever so expert with his ﬁngers, and yet not learn to measure his ordinary movements quite as accurately as if he were an automaton; and that is what a man must do to be safe in the carding-room.”

She sighed again. “The more you tell me, the more difﬁcult it all seems. Why is the carding-room so overcrowded?”

“To make it pay better,” Amherst returned bluntly; and the colour ﬂushed her sensitive skin.

He thought she was about to punish him for his [ 102 ]