ink I should be at my ease with them. I should be half afraid of
their gilt and their gingerbread, and should be ashamed of myself
because I was so. I should not know how to drink wine with them, and
should do a hundred things which would make them think me a beast."

"I don't see why you shouldn't hold up your head with any man in
England," said Lady Anna.

"And so I ought;--but I shouldn't. I should be awed by those whom
I feel to be my inferiors. I had rather not. We had better keep to
ourselves, dear!" But the girl begged for some delay. It was a matter
that required to be considered. If it were necessary for her to
quarrel with all her cousins for the sake of her husband,--with the
bright faineant young Earl, with aunts Jane and Julia, with her
darling Minnie, she would do so. The husband should be to her in
all respects the first and foremost. For his sake, now that she had
resolved that she would be his, she would if necessary separate
herself from all the world. She had withstood the prayers of her
mother, and she was sure that nothing else could move her. But if
the cousins were willing to accept her husband, why should he not be
willing to be accepted? Pride in him might be as weak as pride in
them. If they would put out their hands to him, why should he refuse
to put out his own? "Give me a day, Daniel, to think about it." He
gave her the day, and then that great decider of all things, Sir
William, came to him, congratulating him, bidding him be of good
cheer, and saying fine things of the Lovel family generally. Our
tailor received him courteously, having learned to like the man,
understanding that he had behaved with honesty and wisdom in regard
to his client, and respecting him as one of the workers of the day;
but he declared that for the Lovel family, as a family,--"he did not
care for them particularly." "They are poles asunder from me," he
said.

"Not so," replied Sir William. "They were poles asunder, if you will.
But by your good fortune and merit, if you will allow me to say so,
you have travelled from the one pole very far towards the other."

"I like my own pole a deal the best, Sir William."

"I am an older man than you, Mr. Thwaite, and allow me to assure you
that you are wrong."

"Wrong in preferring those who work for their bread to those who eat
it in idleness?"

"Not that;--but wrong in thinking that there is not hard work done
at the one pole as well as the other; and wrong also in