“Say what you like, Mary.  I deserve it all.”

“I don’t want to say anything,” said Mary, more quietly, “and my anger is of no use.”  She dried her eyes, threw aside her book, rose and fetched her sewing.

Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers, and in that way find access for his imploring penitence.  But no!  Mary could easily avoid looking upward.

“I do care about your mother’s money going,” he said, when she was seated again and sewing quickly.  “I wanted to ask you, Mary—­ don’t you think that Mr. Featherstone—­if you were to tell him—­ tell him, I mean, about apprenticing Alfred—­would advance the money?”

“My family is not fond of begging, Fred. We would rather work for our money.  Besides, you say that Mr. Featherstone has lately given you a hundred pounds.  He rarely makes presents; he has never made presents to us.  I am sure my father will not ask him for anything; and even if I chose to beg of him, it would be of no use.”

“I am so miserable, Mary—­if you knew how miserable I am, you would be sorry for me.”

“There are other things to be more sorry for than that.  But selfish people always think their own discomfort of more importance than anything else in the world.  I see enough of that every day.”

“It is hardly fair to call me selfish.  If you knew what things other young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst.”

“I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves without knowing how they shall pay, must be selfish.  They are always thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other people may lose.”

“Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when he meant it.  There is not a better man in the world than your father, and yet he got into trouble.”

“How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?” said Mary, in a deep tone of indignation.  “He never got into trouble by thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always thinking of the work he was doing for other people.  And he has fared hard, and worked hard to make good everybody’s loss.”

“And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary.  It is not generous to believe the worst of a man.  When you have got any power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better; but that is what you never do.  However, I’m going,” Fred ended, languidly.  “I shall never speak to you about anything again.  I’m very sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused—­that’s all.”

Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up.  There is often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary’s hard experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness.  At Fred’s last words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which may lose itself and get harm.  And when, looking up, her eyes met his dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all her other anxieties.