a smile of pleasure. He was a
rough-headed, hard-featured personage, not old, but very weather-beaten.
His attire was decent and clean; that of his children singularly neat.
It was our old friend Farren. The young ladies approached him.

"You are not going into the church?" he inquired, gazing at them
complacently, yet with a mixture of bashfulness in his look--a sentiment
not by any means the result of awe of their station, but only of
appreciation of their elegance and youth. Before gentlemen--such as
Moore or Helstone, for instance--William was often a little dogged;
with proud or insolent ladies, too, he was quite unmanageable, sometimes
very resentful; but he was most sensible of, most tractable to,
good-humour and civility. His nature--a stubborn one--was repelled by
inflexibility in other natures; for which reason he had never been able
to like his former master, Moore; and unconscious of that gentleman's
good opinion of himself, and of the service he had secretly rendered him
in recommending him as gardener to Mr. Yorke, and by this means to other
families in the neighbourhood, he continued to harbour a grudge against
his austerity. Latterly he had often worked at Fieldhead. Miss Keeldar's
frank, hospitable manners were perfectly charming to him. Caroline he
had known from her childhood; unconsciously she was his ideal of a lady.
Her gentle mien, step, gestures, her grace of person and attire, moved
some artist-fibres about his peasant heart. He had a pleasure in looking
at her, as he had in examining rare flowers or in seeing pleasant
landscapes. Both the ladies liked William; it was their delight to lend
him books, to give him plants; and they preferred his conversation far
before that of many coarse, hard, pretentious people immeasurably higher
in station.

"Who was speaking, William, when you came out?" asked Shirley.

"A gentleman ye set a deal of store on, Miss Shirley--Mr. Donne."

"You look knowing, William. How did you find out my regard for Mr.
Donne?"

"Ay, Miss Shirley, there's a gleg light i' your een sometimes which
betrays you. You look raight down scornful sometimes when Mr. Donne is
by."

"Do you like him yourself, William?"

"Me? I'm stalled o' t' curates, and so is t' wife. They've no manners.
They talk to poor folk fair as if they thought they were beneath them.
They're allus magnifying their office. It is a pity but their office
could magnify them; but it does nought o' t' soart. I