’And it is she, then, that has the pretty mouth your father spoke about?  I should think that would be an antidote to the cleverness and learning.  But I ought to apologize for breaking in upon your last night; I came upon business to your father.’

And then he and my father began to talk about many things that had no interest for me just then, and I began to go over again my conversation with my father.  The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I had spoken truly about my feelings towards Phillis Holman.  I loved her dearly as a sister, but I could never fancy her as my wife.  Still less could I think of her ever—­yes, condescending, that is the word—­condescending to marry me.  I was roused from a reverie on what I should like my possible wife to be, by hearing my father’s warm praise of the minister, as a most unusual character; how they had got back from the diameter of driving-wheels to the subject of the Holmans I could never tell; but I saw that my father’s weighty praises were exciting some curiosity in Mr Holdsworth’s mind; indeed, he said, almost in a voice of reproach,—­

’Why, Paul, you never told me what kind of a fellow this minister-cousin of yours was!’

‘I don’t know that I found out, sir,’ said I.  ’But if I had, I don’t think you’d have listened to me, as you have done to my father.’

‘No! most likely not, old fellow,’ replied Mr Holdsworth, laughing.  And again and afresh I saw what a handsome pleasant clear face his was; and though this evening I had been a bit put out with him—­through his sudden coming, and his having heard my father’s open-hearted confidence—­my hero resumed all his empire over me by his bright merry laugh.

And if he had not resumed his old place that night, he would have done so the next day, when, after my father’s departure, Mr Holdsworth spoke about him with such just respect for his character, such ungrudging admiration of his great mechanical genius, that I was compelled to say, almost unawares,—­

‘Thank you, sir.  I am very much obliged to you.’

’Oh, you’re not at all.  I am only speaking the truth.  Here’s a Birmingham workman, self-educated, one may say—­having never associated with stimulating minds, or had what advantages travel and contact with the world may be supposed to afford—­working out his own thoughts into steel and iron, making a scientific name for himself—­a fortune, if it pleases him to work for money—­and keeping his singleness of heart, his perfect simplicity of manner; it puts me out of patience to think of my expensive schooling, my travels hither and thither, my heaps of scientific books, and I have done nothing to speak of.  But it’s evidently good blood; there’s that Mr Holman, that cousin of yours, made of the same stuff’

’But he’s only cousin because he married my mother’s second cousin,’ said I.

’That knocks a pretty theory on the head, and twice over, too.  I should like to make Holman’s acquaintance.’