About their work they
had been busy since seven o'clock; their feet pressing the leather lungs
which fanned the conical heaps of glowing fuel, their hands poking into
the glow a thin iron rod till the end could be curved into a fiery hook;
snapping it with a mallet; threading it with tongs on to the chain;
hammering, closing the link; and; without a second's pause, thrusting the
iron rod again into the glow. And while they worked they chattered,
laughed sometimes, now and then sighed. They seemed of all ages and all
types; from her who looked like a peasant of Provence, broad, brown, and
strong, to the weariest white consumptive wisp; from old women of
seventy, with straggling grey hair, to fifteen-year-old girls. In the
cottage forges there would be but one worker, or two at most; in the shop
forges four, or even five, little glowing heaps; four or five of the
grimy, pale lung-bellows; and never a moment without a fiery hook about
to take its place on the growing chains, never a second when the thin
smoke of the forges, and of those lives consuming slowly in front of
them, did not escape from out of the dingy, whitewashed spaces past the
dark rafters, away to freedom.
But there had been in the air that morning something more than the white
sunlight. There had been anticipation. And at two o'clock began
fulfilment. The forges were stilled, and from court and alley forth came
the women.
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