ng-man, as the embarrassed penury of the man in
debt. My grub-worm is always a straitened, struggling, care-worn
tradesman."

"Cherish hope, not anxiety. Certain ideas have become too fixed in your
mind. It may be presumptuous to say it, but I have the impression that
there is something wrong in your notions of the best means of attaining
happiness, as there is in----" Second hesitation.

"I am all ear, Caroline."

"In (courage! let me speak the truth)--in your manner--mind, I say only
_manner_--to these Yorkshire workpeople."

"You have often wanted to tell me that, have you not?"

"Yes; often--very often."

"The faults of my manner are, I think, only negative. I am not proud.
What has a man in my position to be proud of? I am only taciturn,
phlegmatic, and joyless."

"As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like your frames and
shears. In your own house you seem different."

"To those of my own house I am no alien, which I am to these English
clowns. I might act the benevolent with them, but acting is not my
_forte_. I find them irrational, perverse; they hinder me when I long to
hurry forward. In treating them justly I fulfil my whole duty towards
them."

"You don't expect them to love you, of course?"

"Nor wish it."

"Ah!" said the monitress, shaking her head and heaving a deep sigh. With
this ejaculation, indicative that she perceived a screw to be loose
somewhere, but that it was out of her reach to set it right, she bent
over her grammar, and sought the rule and exercise for the day.

"I suppose I am not an affectionate man, Caroline. The attachment of a
very few suffices me."

"If you please, Robert, will you mend me a pen or two before you go?"

"First let me rule your book, for you always contrive to draw the lines
aslant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a fine one, I think?"

"Such as you generally make for me and Hortense; not your own broad
points."

"If I were of Louis's calling I might stay at home and dedicate this
morning to you and your studies, whereas I must spend it in Skyes's
wool-warehouse."

"You will be making money."

"More likely losing it."

As he finished mending the pens, a horse, saddled and bridled, was
brought up to the garden-gate.

"There, Fred is ready for me; I must go. I'll take one look to see what
the spring has done in the south border, too, first."

He quitted the room, and went out into the garden ground behind the
mill. A swee