ppeared confused when my sisters told you the words, as if you felt
flattered. You turned red, just like a certain vain little lad at our
school, who always thinks proper to blush when he gets a rise in the
class. For your benefit, Mr. Moore, I've been looking up the word
'sentimental' in the dictionary, and I find it to mean 'tinctured with
sentiment.' On examining further, 'sentiment' is explained to be
thought, idea, notion. A sentimental man, then, is one who has thoughts,
ideas, notions; an unsentimental man is one destitute of thought, idea,
or notion."

And Mark stopped. He did not smile, he did not look round for
admiration. He had said his say, and was silent.

"Ma foi! mon ami," observed Mr. Moore to Yorke, "ce sont vraiment des
enfants terribles, que les votres!"

Rose, who had been listening attentively to Mark's speech, replied to
him, "There are different kinds of thoughts, ideas, and notions," said
she, "good and bad. Sentimental must refer to the bad, or Miss Helstone
must have taken it in that sense, for she was not blaming Mr. Moore; she
was defending him."

"That's my kind little advocate!" said Moore, taking Rose's hand.

"She was defending him," repeated Rose, "as I should have done had I
been in her place, for the other ladies seemed to speak spitefully."

"Ladies always do speak spitefully," observed Martin. "It is the nature
of womenites to be spiteful."

Matthew now, for the first time, opened his lips. "What a fool Martin
is, to be always gabbling about what he does not understand!"

"It is my privilege, as a freeman, to gabble on whatever subject I
like," responded Martin.

"You use it, or rather abuse it, to such an extent," rejoined the elder
brother, "that you prove you ought to have been a slave."

"A slave! a slave! That to a Yorke, and from a Yorke! This fellow," he
added, standing up at the table, and pointing across it to
Matthew--"this fellow forgets, what every cottier in Briarfield knows,
that all born of our house have that arched instep under which water can
flow--proof that there has not been a slave of the blood for three
hundred years."

"Mountebank!" said Matthew.

"Lads, be silent!" exclaimed Mr. Yorke.--"Martin, you are a
mischief-maker. There would have been no disturbance but for you."

"Indeed! Is that correct? Did I begin, or did Matthew? Had I spoken to
him when he accused me of gabbling like a fool?"

"A presumptuous fool!" repeated Matthew.

Here Mr