I'm wanting you!" and he stepped
into the light and reached forward his hand, as if to draw her to him.
Mrs. Sinclair gasped and recoiled in horror, as she recognized who it
was that stood before her.
"No," she cried decisively, stepping further back into the shelter of
the house, her voice low and intense with indignation. "No, I have not
come to that yet, thank God. Gang home, you dirty brute, that you are!
I'll be very ill off when I ask anything, or take anything, from you,
Jock Walker!" For it was well known in Lowwood that Jock Walker's
errands to people in distress had always in them an ulterior motive.
He was the under manager at the pits, and his reputation was of the
blackest. There were men in the village of Lowwood who were well aware
of this man's relations with their wives, and they openly agreed to the
sale of the honor of their women folk in return for what he gave them in
the shape of contracts, at which they could make more money than their
neighbors, or good "places," where the coal was easier won. In fact, to
be a contractor was a synonym for this sort of dealing, for no one ever
got a contract from Walker unless his wife, or his daughter, was a woman
of easy virtue, and at the service of this man.
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