as Alfred said, Ellen
had only to hold her tongue for them be able to hear his loud tones
telling Mrs. King that the glass was falling, and his hay in capital
order, and his hands short, and asking whether her boy Harold would come
and help in the hay-field between the post times. Mrs. King gave a ready
answer that the boy would be well pleased, and the farmer promised him
his victuals and sixpence for the day. 'Your lass wouldn't like to come
too, I suppose, eh?'

Ellen flushed with indignation. She go a hay-making! Her mother was
civilly making answer that her daughter was engaged with her sick
brother, and besides--had her work for Mrs. Price, which must be finished
off. The farmer, saying he had not much expected her, but thought she
might like a change from moping over her needle, went off.

Ellen did not feel ready to forgive him for wanting to set her to field-
work. There is some difference between being fine and being refined, and
in Ellen's station of life it is very difficult to hit the right point.
To be refined is to be free from all that is rough, coarse, or ungentle;
to be fine, is to affect to be above such things. Now Ellen was really
refined in her quietness and maidenly modesty, and there was no need for
her to undertake any of those kinds of tasks which, by removing young
girls from home shelter, do sometimes help to make them rude and
indecorous; but she was _fine_, when she gave herself a little mincing
air of contempt, as if she despised the work and those who did it. Lydia
Grant, who worked so steadily and kept to herself so modestly, that no
one ventured a bold word to her as she tossed her hay, was just as
refined as Ellen King behind her white blinds, ay, or as Jane Selby
herself in her terraced garden. Refinement is in the mind that loves
whatsoever is pure, lovely, and of good report; finery is in disdaining
what is homely or humble.

Boys of all degrees are usually, when they are good for anything, the
greatest enemies of the finery tending to affectation; and Alfred at once
began to make a little fun of his sister, and tell her it would be a
famous thing for her, he believed she had quite forgotten how to run, and
did not know a rake from a fork when she saw it. He knew she was longing
for a ride in the waggon, if she would but own it.

Ellen used to be teased by this kind of joking; but she was too glad to
see Alfred well enough so to entertain himself, to think of anything