Changes at Milton
- Now we're looking back in on Milton, where the chimneys are smoky and the skies are…uh…well they're smoky, too. The narrator puts us into a pretty grey mood by talking about how industry and business are always going through the same cycles over and over without any real purpose.
- The truth is, though, that things have changed since Margaret Hale left town. Mr. Thornton, for one, is in pretty dire straits. It turns out that the workers' strike took a bigger toll on his business than he first thought, and now the guy doesn't have much in the way of moolah.
- While Thornton walks around town moping, he runs into Nicholas Higgins, who has turned into something of his right-hand man. Higgins asks Thornton whether he's heard anything lately from Margaret Hale, and the very mention of her name actually brightens Thornton's mood.
- Things get worse, though, when Higgins brings up the rumors about Margaret maybe marrying Henry Lennox. Ouch.
- Just at this moment, Higgins brings up the fact that Margaret's brother Frederick was in Milton when their mother died. Of course, this changes everything for Thornton. Now he knows that the young man at the train station with Margaret wasn't Henry Lennox at all, but Margaret brother.
- As much as this new info cheers him up, though, Thornton realizes that his business is not looking good. He has the opportunity to make a risky investment with the money he has left, but in the end, he refuses to do it out of principle. If he ended up losing on the investment, it's not his own money he'd be losing, but that of people who've made loans to him.
- In the end, the investment that Mr. Thornton has passed up pays huge dividends. It would have made Thornton rich beyond belief, but he still feels like he did the moral thing by not risking other people's money.