or I had not been brought up in the Society; this having
been the last request of my mother, rigidly observed by her husband.
The more so, people said, as while she lived they had not been quite
happy together. But whatever he was to her, in their brief union, he
was a good father to me, and for his sake I have always loved and
honoured the Society of Friends.

"Phineas," said he (after having stopped a volley of poor Jael's
indignations, beseechings, threats, and prognostications, by a resolute
"Get the lad ready to go")--"Phineas, my son, I rejoice to see thy mind
turning towards business. I trust, should better health be vouchsafed
thee, that some day soon--"

"Not just yet, father," said I, sadly--for I knew what he referred to,
and that it would never be. Mentally and physically I alike revolted
from my father's trade. I held the tan-yard in abhorrence--to enter it
made me ill for days; sometimes for months and months I never went near
it. That I should ever be what was my poor father's one desire, his
assistant and successor in his business, was, I knew, a thing totally
impossible.

It hurt me a little that my project of going with him to-day should in
any way have deceived him; and rather silently and drearily we set out
together; progressing through Norton Bury streets in our old way, my
father marching along in his grave fashion, I steering my little
carriage, and keeping as close as I could beside him. Many a person
looked at us as we passed; almost everybody knew us, but few, even of
our own neighbours, saluted us; we were Nonconformists and Quakers.

I had never been in the town since the day I came through it with John
Halifax. The season was much later now, but it was quite warm still in
the sunshine, and very pleasant looked the streets, even the close,
narrow streets of Norton Bury. I beg its pardon; antiquaries hold it a
most "interesting and remarkable" place: and I myself have sometimes
admired its quaint, overhanging, ornamented house-fronts--blackened,
and wonderfully old. But one rarely notices what has been familiar
throughout life; and now I was less struck by the beauty of the
picturesque old town than by the muddiness of its pathways, and the
mingled noises of murmuring looms, scolding women, and squabbling
children, that came up from the alleys which lay between the High
Street and the Avon. In those alleys were hundreds of our poor folk
living, huddled together in misery, rags,