"
There was something in the Interpreter's manner--something in the
weary, drooping figure in that wheel chair--in the tired, deep-lined
face--in the pain-filled eyes and the gentle voice that went to the
deeps of Helen Ward's woman heart.
With her, as with every one in Millsburgh, the strike was a topic of
daily conversation. She sympathized with her brother in his anxiety.
She was worried over the noticeable effect of the excitement upon her
father. She was interested in McIver's talk of the situation. But in no
vital way had her life been touched by the industrial trouble. In no
way had she come in actual contact with it. The realities of the
situation were to her vague, intangible, remote from her world, as
indeed the Mill itself had been, before her visit with John that day.
To her, the Interpreter was of all men set apart from the world. In his
little hut on the cliff, with his books and his basket making, her
gentle old friend's life, it seemed to her, held not one thing in
common with the busy world that lay within sight of the balcony-porch.
The thought that the industrial trouble could in any way touch him came
to her with a distinct shock.
"Surely," she protested, at last, "the strike cannot affect you. It has
nothing to do with your work.
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