LITMIR.BIZ

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said she believed there was a good deal of affectation about you, and that with your dark hair and pale face you looked to her like some sort of a sentimental noodle.”

      Again Mr. Yorke laughed. Mrs. Yorke even joined in this time. “You see in what esteem you are held behind your back,” said she; “yet I believe that Miss Pearson would like to catch you. She set her cap at you when you first came into the country, old as she is.”

      “And who contradicted her, Rosy?” inquired Moore.

      “A lady whom I don’t know, because she never visits here, though I see her every Sunday at church. She sits in the pew near the pulpit. I generally look at her, instead of looking at my prayer-book, for she is like a picture in our dining-room, that woman with the dove in her hand — at least she has eyes like it, and a nose too, a straight nose, that makes all her face look, somehow, what I call clear.”

      “And you don’t know her!” exclaimed Jessy, in a tone of exceeding surprise. “That’s so like Rose. Mr. Moore, I often wonder in what sort of a world my sister lives. I am sure she does not live all her time in this. One is continually finding out that she is quite ignorant of some little matter which everybody else knows. To think of her going solemnly to church every Sunday, and looking all service-time at one particular person, and never so much as asking that person’s name. She means Caroline Helstone, the rector’s niece. I remember all about it. Miss Helstone was quite angry with Anne Pearson. She said, ‘Robert Moore is neither affected nor sentimental; you mistake his character utterly, or rather not one of you here knows anything about it.’ Now, shall I tell you what she is like? I can tell what people are like, and how they are dressed, better than Rose can.”

      “Let us hear.”

      “She is nice; she is fair; she has a pretty white slender throat; she has long curls, not stiff ones — they hang loose and soft, their colour is brown but not dark; she speaks quietly, with a clear tone; she never makes a bustle in moving; she often wears a gray silk dress; she is neat all over — her gowns, and her shoes, and her gloves always fit her. She is what I call a lady, and when I am as tall as she is, I mean to be like her. Shall I suit you if I am? Will you really marry me?”

      Moore stroked Jessy’s hair. For a minute he seemed as if he would draw her nearer to him, but instead he put her a little farther off.

      “Oh! you won’t have me? You push me away.”

      “Why, Jessy, you care nothing about me. You never come to see me now at the Hollow.”

      “Because you don’t ask me.”

      Hereupon Mr. Moore gave both the little girls an invitation to pay him a visit next day, promising that, as he was going to Stilbro’ in the morning, he would buy them each a present, of what nature he would not then declare, but they must come and see. Jessy was about to reply, when one of the boys unexpectedly broke in, —

      “I know that Miss Helstone you have all been palavering about. She’s an ugly girl. I hate her. I hate all womenites. I wonder what they were made for.”

      “Martin!” said his father, for Martin it was. The lad only answered by turning his cynical young face, half-arch, half-truculent, towards the paternal chair. “Martin, my lad, thou’rt a swaggering whelp now; thou wilt some day be an outrageous puppy. But stick to those sentiments of thine. See, I’ll write down the words now i’ my pocket-book.” (The senior took out a morocco-covered book, and deliberately wrote therein.) “Ten years hence, Martin, if thou and I be both alive at that day, I’ll remind thee of that speech.”

      “I’ll say the same then. I mean always to hate women. They’re such dolls; they do nothing but dress themselves finely, and go swimming about to be admired. I’ll never marry. I’ll be a bachelor.”

      “Stick to it! stick to it! — Hesther” (addressing his wife), “I was like him when I was his age — a regular misogamist; and, behold! by the time I was three-and-twenty — being then a tourist in France and Italy, and the Lord knows where — I curled my hair every night before I went to bed, and wore a ring i’ my ear, and would have worn one i’ my nose if it had been the fashion, and all that I might make myself pleasing and charming to the ladies. Martin will do the like.”

      “Will I? Never! I’ve more sense. What a guy you were, father! As to dressing, I make this vow: I’ll never dress more finely than as you see me at present. — Mr. Moore, I’m clad in blue cloth from top to toe, and they laugh at me, and call me sailor at the grammar-school. I laugh louder at them, and say they are all magpies and parrots, with their coats one colour, and their waistcoats another, and their trousers a third. I’ll always wear blue cloth, and nothing but blue cloth. It is beneath a human being’s dignity to dress himself in parti-coloured garments.”

      “Ten years hence, Martin, no tailor’s shop will have choice of colours varied enough for thy exacting taste; no perfumer’s stores essences exquisite enough for thy fastidious senses.”

      Martin looked disdain, but vouchsafed no further reply. Meantime Mark, who for some minutes had been rummaging amongst a pile of books on a side-table, took the word. He spoke in a peculiarly slow, quiet voice, and with an expression of still irony in his face not easy to describe.

      “Mr. Moore,” said he, “you think perhaps it was a compliment on Miss Caroline Helstone’s part to say you were not sentimental. I thought you appeared 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 vôtres!”

      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

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