‘From my father,’ said I, proudly.  ’Have you not heard of his discovery of a new method of shunting?  It was in the Gazette.  It was patented.  I thought every one had heard of Manning’s patent winch.’

‘We don’t know who invented the alphabet,’ said he, half smiling, and taking up his pipe.

‘No, I dare say not, sir,’ replied I, half offended; ’that’s so long ago.’  Puff—­puff—­puff.

’But your father must be a notable man.  I heard of him once before; and it is not many a one fifty miles away whose fame reaches Heathbridge.’

’My father is a notable man, sir.  It is not me that says so; it is Mr Holdsworth, and—­and everybody.’

‘He is right to stand up for his father,’ said cousin Holman, as if she were pleading for me.

I chafed inwardly, thinking that my father needed no one to stand up for him.  He was man sufficient for himself.

‘Yes—­he is right,’ said the minister, placidly.  ’Right, because it comes from his heart—­right, too, as I believe, in point of fact.  Else there is many a young cockerel that will stand upon a dunghill and crow about his father, by way of making his own plumage to shine.  I should like to know thy father,’ he went on, turning straight to me, with a kindly, frank look in his eyes.

But I was vexed, and would take no notice.  Presently, having finished his pipe, he got up and left the room.  Phillis put her work hastily down, and went after him.  In a minute or two she returned, and sate down again.  Not long after, and before I had quite recovered my good temper, he opened the door out of which he had passed, and called to me to come to him.  I went across a narrow stone passage into a strange, many-cornered room, not ten feet in area, part study, part counting house, looking into the farm-yard; with a desk to sit at, a desk to stand at, a Spittoon, a set of shelves with old divinity books upon them; another, smaller, filled with books on farriery, farming, manures, and such subjects, with pieces of paper containing memoranda stuck against the whitewashed walls with wafers, nails, pins, anything that came readiest to hand; a box of carpenter’s tools on the floor, and some manuscripts in short-hand on the desk.

He turned round, half laughing.  ’That foolish girl of mine thinks I have vexed you’—­putting his large, powerful hand on my shoulder. ’"Nay,” says I, “kindly meant is kidney taken”—­is it not so?’

‘It was not quite, sir,’ replied I, vanquished by his manner; ‘but it shall be in future.’

’Come, that’s right.  You and I shall be friends.  Indeed, it’s not many a one I would bring in here.  But I was reading a book this morning, and I could not make it out; it is a book that was left here by mistake one day; I had subscribed to Brother Robinson’s sermons; and I was glad to see this instead of them, for sermons though they be, they’re . . . well, never mind!  I took ’em both, and made my old coat do a bit longer; but all’s fish that comes to my net.  I have fewer books than leisure to read them, and I have a prodigious big appetite.  Here it is.’