midday
In the morning , except in high summer , I was up before dawn , and breakfasted upon the swift , smooth train , and perhaps saw the sunrise as I rushed out of the little tunnel that pierced Clayton Crest , and so to work like a man . Now that we had got all the homes and schools and all the softness of life away from our coal and iron ore and clay , now that a thousand obstructive `` rights '' and timidities had been swept aside , we could let ourselves go , we merged this enterprise with that , cut across this or that anciently obstructive piece of private land , joined and separated , effected gigantic consolidations and gigantic economies , and the valley , no longer a pit of squalid human tragedies and meanly conflicting industries , grew into a sort of beauty of its own , a savage inhuman beauty of force and machinery and flames . One was a Titan in that Etna . Then back one came at midday to bath and change in the train , and so to the leisurely gossiping lunch in the club dining-room in Lowchester House , and the refreshment of these green and sunlit afternoon tranquillities . Sometimes in her profounder moments my mother doubted whether all this last phase of her life was not a dream . `` A dream , '' I used to say , `` a dream indeed -- but a dream that is one step nearer awakening than that nightmare of the former days . '' She found great comfort and assurance in my altered clothes -- she liked the new fashions of dress , she alleged .