ister--' with a curious break both before and after
the words, 'has received hardly any teaching, Hexam?'

'Hardly any, sir.'

'Sacrificed, no doubt, to her father's objections. I remember them in
your case. Yet--your sister--scarcely looks or speaks like an ignorant
person.'

'Lizzie has as much thought as the best, Mr Headstone. Too much,
perhaps, without teaching. I used to call the fire at home, her books,
for she was always full of fancies--sometimes quite wise fancies,
considering--when she sat looking at it.'

'I don't like that,' said Bradley Headstone.

His pupil was a little surprised by this striking in with so sudden
and decided and emotional an objection, but took it as a proof of the
master's interest in himself. It emboldened him to say:

'I have never brought myself to mention it openly to you, Mr Headstone,
and you're my witness that I couldn't even make up my mind to take it
from you before we came out to-night; but it's a painful thing to think
that if I get on as well as you hope, I shall be--I won't say disgraced,
because I don't mean disgraced-but--rather put to the blush if it was
known--by a sister who has been very good to me.'

'Yes,' said Bradley Headstone in a slurring way, for his mind scarcely
seemed to touch that point, so smoothly did it glide to another, 'and
there is this possibility to consider. Some man who had worked his way
might come to admire--your sister--and might even in time bring himself
to think of marrying--your sister--and it would be a sad drawback and a
heavy penalty upon him, if; overcoming in his mind other inequalities of
condition and other considerations against it, this inequality and this
consideration remained in full force.'

'That's much my own meaning, sir.'

'Ay, ay,' said Bradley Headstone, 'but you spoke of a mere brother.
Now, the case I have supposed would be a much stronger case; because an
admirer, a husband, would form the connexion voluntarily, besides being
obliged to proclaim it: which a brother is not. After all, you know, it
must be said of you that you couldn't help yourself: while it would be
said of him, with equal reason, that he could.'

'That's true, sir. Sometimes since Lizzie was left free by father's
death, I have thought that such a young woman might soon acquire more
than enough to pass muster. And sometimes I have even thought that
perhaps Miss Peecher--'

'For the purpose, I would advise Not Miss Peecher,' Bradley Headsto