and such things as were to be white and clean, were
just spotless in their purity. Opposite to the
fire-place, extending the whole length of the room,
was an oaken shovel-board, with the right incline
for a skilful player to send the weights into the
prescribed space. There were baskets of white
work about, and a small shelf of books hung against
the wall, books used for reading, and not for propping
up a beau-pot of flowers. I took down one or
two of those books once when I was left alone in the
house-place on the first evening—Virgil,
Caesar, a Greek grammar—oh, dear! ah, me!
and Phillis Holman’s name in each of them!
I shut them up, and put them back in their places,
and walked as far away from the bookshelf as I could.
Yes, and I gave my cousin Phillis a wide berth, as
though she was sitting at her work quietly enough,
and her hair was looking more golden, her dark eyelashes
longer, her round pillar of a throat whiter than ever.
We had done tea, and we had returned into the house-place
that the minister might smoke his pipe without fear
of contaminating the drab damask window-curtains of
the parlour. He had made himself ‘reverend’
by putting on one of the voluminous white muslin neckcloths
that I had seen cousin Holman ironing that first visit
I had paid to the Hope Farm, and by making one or
two other unimportant changes in his dress. He
sate looking steadily at me, but whether he saw me
or not I cannot tell. At the time I fancied that
he did, and was gauging me in some unknown fashion
in his secret mind. Every now and then he took
his pipe out of his mouth, knocked out the ashes, and
asked me some fresh question. As long as these
related to my acquirements or my reading, I shuffled
uneasily and did not know what to answer. By-and-by
he got round to the more practical subject of railroads,
and on this I was more at home. I really had taken
an interest in my work; nor would Mr Holdsworth, indeed,
have kept me in his employment if I had not given
my mind as well as my time to it; and I was, besides,
full of the difficulties which beset us just then,
owing to our not being able to find a steady bottom
on the Heathbridge moss, over which we wished to carry
our line. In the midst of all my eagerness in
speaking about this, I could not help being struck
with the extreme pertinence of his questions.
I do not mean that he did not show ignorance of many
of the details of engineering: that was to have
been expected; but on the premises he had got hold
of; he thought clearly and reasoned logically.
Phillis—so like him as she was both in body
and mind—kept stopping at her work and looking
at me, trying to fully understand all that I said.
I felt she did; and perhaps it made me take more pains
in using clear expressions, and arranging my words,
than I otherwise should.
’She shall see I know something worth knowing, though it mayn’t be her dead-and-gone languages,’ thought I.
‘I see,’ said the minister, at length. ’I understand it all. You’ve a clear, good head of your own, my lad,—choose how you came by it.’