The little village had become a town of some importance, but nearly
every household in it was connected in some way or other with the
cotton mills, either as cotton masters or cotton operatives. There were
necessarily a few professional men and shopkeepers, but there was street
after street full of cotton mills, and the ancient manor of the lords of
Hatton had become thoroughly a manufacturing locality.
But Hatton-in-Elmete was in a beautiful locality, lying on a ridge of
hills rising precipitously from the river, and these hills surrounded
the town as with walls and appeared to block up the way into the world
beyond. The principal street lay along their base, and John Hatton rode
up it at the close of the long summer day, when the mills were shut and
the operatives gathered in groups about its places of interest. Every
woman smiled at him, every man touched his cap, but a stranger would
have noticed that not one man bared his head. Yorkshire men do not offer
that courtesy to any man, for its neglect (originally the expression of
strong individuality and self-respect) had become a habit as natural and
spontaneous as their manner or their speech.
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