t, and a small shelf of books hung against
the wall, books used for reading, and not for propping up a beau-pot of
flowers. I took down one or two of those books once when I was left
alone in the house-place on the first evening--Virgil, Caesar, a Greek
grammar--oh, dear! ah, me! and Phillis Holman's name in each of them! I
shut them up, and put them back in their places, and walked as far away
from the bookshelf as I could. Yes, and I gave my cousin Phillis a wide
berth, as though she was sitting at her work quietly enough, and her
hair was looking more golden, her dark eyelashes longer, her round
pillar of a throat whiter than ever. We had done tea, and we had
returned into the house-place that the minister might smoke his pipe
without fear of contaminating the drab damask window-curtains of the
parlour. He had made himself 'reverend' by putting on one of the
voluminous white muslin neckcloths that I had seen cousin Holman
ironing that first visit I had paid to the Hope Farm, and by making one
or two other unimportant changes in his dress. He sate looking steadily
at me, but whether he saw me or not I cannot tell. At the time I
fancied that he did, and was gauging me in some unknown fashion in his
secret mind. Every now and then he took his pipe out of his mouth,
knocked out the ashes, and asked me some fresh question. As long as
these related to my acquirements or my reading, I shuffled uneasily and
did not know what to answer. By-and-by he got round to the more
practical subject of railroads, and on this I was more at home. I
really had taken an interest in my work; nor would Mr Holdsworth,
indeed, have kept me in his employment if I had not given my mind as
well as my time to it; and I was, besides, full of the difficulties
which beset us just then, owing to our not being able to find a steady
bottom on the Heathbridge moss, over which we wished to carry our line.
In the midst of all my eagerness in speaking about this, I could not
help being struck with the extreme pertinence of his questions. I do
not mean that he did not show ignorance of many of the details of
engineering: that was to have been expected; but on the premises he had
got hold of; he thought clearly and reasoned logically. Phillis--so
like him as she was both in body and mind--kept stopping at her work
and looking at me, trying to fully understand all that I said. I felt
she did; and perhaps it made me take more pains in using clear
expressions, and