So while Mary took her own way, growing more spirited every day, and
growing in her beauty too, her father was chairman at many a Trades'
Union meeting; a friend of delegates, and ambitious of being a
delegate himself; a Chartist, and ready to do anything for his
order.
But now times were good; and all these feelings were theoretical,
not practical. His most practical thought was getting Mary
apprenticed to a dressmaker; for he had never left off disliking a
factory life for a girl, on more accounts than one.
Mary must do something. The factories being, as I said, out of the
question, there were two things open--going out to service and the
dressmaking business; and against the first of these, Mary set
herself with all the force of her strong will. What that will might
have been able to achieve had her father been against her, I cannot
tell; but he disliked the idea of parting with her, who was the
light of his hearth; the voice of his otherwise silent home.
Besides, with his ideas and feelings towards the higher classes, he
considered domestic servitude as a species of slavery; a pampering
of artificial wants on the one side, a giving up of every right of
leisure by day and quiet rest by night on the other.
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