CHAPTER II - WHAT SHE HAD BEEN


What she had been, what I should be, these were the two great
subjects between us in my boyhood, and while we discussed the one
we were deciding the other, though neither of us knew it.

Before I reached my tenth year a giant entered my native place in
the night, and we woke to find him in possession. He transformed
it into a new town at a rate with which we boys only could keep up,
for as fast as he built dams we made rafts to sail in them; he
knocked down houses, and there we were crying 'Pilly!' among the
ruins; he dug trenches, and we jumped them; we had to be dragged by
the legs from beneath his engines, he sunk wells, and in we went.
But though there were never circumstances to which boys could not
adapt themselves in half an hour, older folk are slower in the
uptake, and I am sure they stood and gaped at the changes so
suddenly being worked in our midst, and scarce knew their way home
now in the dark. Where had been formerly but the click of the
shuttle was soon the roar of 'power,' handlooms were pushed into a
corner as a room is cleared for a dance; every morning at half-past
five the town was wakened with a yell, and from a chimney-stack
that rose high into our caller air the conqueror waved for evermore
his flag of smoke. Another era had dawned, new customs, new
fashions sprang into life, all as lusty as if they had been born at
twenty-one; as quickly as two people may exchange seats, the
daughter, till now but a knitter of stockings, became the