"Nay, I niver heard tell of it before. It sounds varry like uncommon nonsense. Eleanor's nobbut a child, it's a queer thing if Aske is letting her dispute with him already."
"Ben, thou art a bachelor. Little thou knows of women, and there's no use in telling thee how they do manage men in these days. St. Paul himself would niver hev believed it, niver!"
Then Burley walked away. There had been no profession of friendship, no ceremony at parting, but the whole tone and attitude of the two men towards each other indicated a sincere affection and perfect confidence. For the inequality between them was more artificial than real. Both had been born in the same small moor-side village, and they had shared together their boyish griefs and joys. Both had begun life in the same mill. Burley had married a rich wife, made money, and became a large mill-owner and a wealthy man. Holden had enough and to spare, and if he had not been as successful in business he had given his spare time to study, and become a favorite local preacher and class-leader. So, if Burley was master in the mill, Holden was in higher things the master's teacher. Each in his capacity spoke plain words to the other, but their mutual attachment was as true and warm as in the days when they had trudged hand in hand to hard work, and shared their scanty meals.
The mention of his daughter's name changed the whole expression of Jonathan's face, and as he climbed the steps to an upper weaving-room it grew dark with anger.
"Let him, if he dares," he muttered; "he'll hev more than a lass to fight with if he does." Then he opened a door, and looked down the rows of ponderous Jacquard looms with their dangling yellow harness, and their silent, patient weavers. One loom was not working, but at another, not far from it, a very handsome woman was busily engaged. She did not look up as Jonathan entered, but she was aware of his entrance, and her face flushed as he approached her. For a moment he watched the different threads of the harness rising and falling as if to a tune; then he said, softly, "Thy brother is away again, Sarah, now what wilt thou do about it?"
"I can't tell, master, till t' time comes, then I'll do my duty, whatever it may be. Hev patience a bit longer wi' him."
"Then it's for thy sake, I can tell thee that." She made a slight negative motion of her head, and bent her face resolutely over the leaves and flowers growing with every motion of the shuttle.
Jonathan then paused at the empty loom. The work in progress was of a beautiful and intricate design, and evidently the labor of a master-hand. He admired it heartily, and catching Sarah's glance watching him, he nodded back to her his approval of it. As he left the room he looked once more at her, and most men would have done the same. Not, perhaps, because of the perfect oval of her face, or of the charm of her large, lustrous gray eyes, but because such a loving, noble soul looked forth from them that one forgot whether the body was there or not.
There was an old tie between Sarah Benson and her master, one which she probably knew nothing of. But Jonathan remembered that he had loved the girl's mother, that he had carried her dinner-can, and gone with her to chapel, and tended the looms next hers, for two happy years. And he knew now that Sarah was very dear to him, though he had never suspected the love until it had become a part of his daily life and dearest hopes.
For when Sarah first entered his mill she was only a child ten years old, and many changes had taken place since. Jonathan, then on the road to fortune, had achieved success, and the only child that his wife left him had been recently married to Anthony Aske, the young squire of Aske Hall, and one of the richest landed proprietors in the county. Her fortune and future were provided for, and Jonathan, yet in the prime of life, a handsome man whose career was assured, hoped now to realize with the woman he loved the domestic happiness which had been his dream thirty years before.
But in all our hopes there is generally some why or if. Sarah did not look at life through the same eyes as Jonathan. She loved with her whole soul a brother, who relied upon her almost as he would have relied upon a mother. And this youth had just those qualities which attach women with passionate strength to their possessor. Handsome, gay, full of beautiful, impossible dreams, quite dependent upon her care and fore-thought for every daily comfort, she yet loved him all the better for his faults and his weakness.
True, when he chose to work, few workmen could compete with Steve Benson. The loveliest designs grew under his fingers, and he had an equal facility in their execution. But he hated any employment which "chopped his days into hours and minutes" and above all things he hated the confinement and noise and smell of the mill.
The trouble with Steve was one which ruins many a promising life. Nature had made him to live with her, and to do his life's duty in some of her free, open-air workshops; and ignorance and untoward circumstances had tethered him to a Jacquard loom in a noisy mill. Sarah dimly understood something of this mistake, but thirty years ago women were not accustomed to analyze life and its conditions. They took it as it came, and thought it enough to follow their catechism and "do their duty in that state of life into which it hath pleased God to call them."
At six o'clock Sarah had reached the little cottage which she called home. It consisted only of three rooms, one down-stairs and two smaller ones above it, but it was beautifully clean and very well furnished. The flag floor was as white as water and pipe-clay could make it, the steel fender shone and glinted in the pleasant blaze of the fire, there was a home-made hearth-rug, large and thick and many-colored, before it, and a little round table set with cups and saucers of a gay pattern; the kettle simmered upon the hob, and Sarah was kneeling before the fire toasting some slices of bread, when the door opened, and a laughing, handsome, dusty fellow entered.
"My word, Sarah, but I am tired and thirsty and hungry! Eh, lass, but I've hed such a jolly tramp of it."
"Wheriver hes thou been, my lad? Burley was rare put out to find thy loom idle."
The last word was broken in two by a kiss, and ere Steve let her face slip from his hands he stroked affectionately the smooth bands of black hair above it.
"Been? Why, I've been all through Elsham woods, and down to t' varry sea-sands, and look 'ee here, my lass!" Then he emptied his pockets on the rug beside her, shells and insects and weeds, and all sorts of curious things.
She could not say a cross word to him, he looked so happy, so perfectly satisfied with his day's doings. He passed over her remark about his loom as if it was a subject not worth speaking about, and began a vivid description of all he had seen and heard. She brought him a basin of water and soap, and a towel, and while he spattered and splashed, he was telling her, in interrupted sentences and with broken laughs, all his adventures.
"There is no tea like thine, Sarah, and no toast either, dear lass;" and when he had drained the pot and emptied the plate, she made him more, and still listened, with apparent interest, to his talk, though her thoughts towards the end of the meal were wandering far from Elsham woods and the sea-side. After it was over and the house-place tidied, she went to her room to consult with her own heart. What was to be done with this loving, charming lad, who could neglect his work, and spend a whole day gathering shells and weeds, and seemingly quite unconscious that he was doing wrong? She had allowed Steve to pursue his own way so long, and yet she was aware that it contained elements of disaster which at some time would be beyond control.
This night, in spite of her apparent content, a question she had long put aside presented itself peremptorily for answer. This road, or that road, which was it to be? She did not distrust her own judgment, and she was a woman who, amid many counsellors, would be very likely to follow her own judgment, yet she wanted some one to advise her to do what she had already determined on.
She put on her best dress and bonnet and went down-stairs. Steve was sitting in the chimney-corner, serenely smoking a long clay pipe. On the table at his elbow there was a jar of tobacco, his violin and his specimens. His face beamed with the luxury of anticipated pleasure, yet as soon as he saw that Sarah was going out he said, "Wait a bit Sarah; I'm none too tired to walk wi' thee."
"Nay, I won't hev thee, Steve. I'm going by mysen to-night, lad."
His