‘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! Hester’ (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 mysel’ 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