’Well, Dixon, I won’t shoot you, and I’ll try not to be cross again.’

’You never have.  If I’ve said it at times, it has always been to myself, just in private, by way of making a little agreeable conversation, for there’s no one here fit to talk to.  And when you fire up, you’re the very image of Master Frederick.  I could find in my heart to put you in a passion any day, just to see his stormy look coming like a great cloud over your face.  But now you go out, Miss.  I’ll watch over missus; and as for master, his books are company enough for him, if he should come in.’

‘I will go,’ said Margaret.  She hung about Dixon for a minute or so, as if afraid and irresolute; then suddenly kissing her, she went quickly out of the room.

‘Bless her!’ said Dixon.  ’She’s as sweet as a nut.  There are three people I love:  it’s missus, Master Frederick, and her.  Just them three.  That’s all.  The rest be hanged, for I don’t know what they’re in the world for.  Master was born, I suppose, for to marry missus.  If I thought he loved her properly, I might get to love him in time.  But he should ha’ made a deal more on her, and not been always reading, reading, thinking, thinking.  See what it has brought him to!  Many a one who never reads nor thinks either, gets to be Rector, and Dean, and what not; and I dare say master might, if he’d just minded missus, and let the weary reading and thinking alone.—­There she goes’ (looking out of the window as she heard the front door shut).  ’Poor young lady! her clothes look shabby to what they did when she came to Helstone a year ago.  Then she hadn’t so much as a darned stocking or a cleaned pair of gloves in all her wardrobe.  And now—!’

CHAPTER XVII

WHAT IS A STRIKE?

’There are briars besetting every path,
Which call for patient care;
There is a cross in every lot,
And an earnest need for prayer.’ 
Anon.

Margaret went out heavily and unwillingly enough.  But the length of a street—­yes, the air of a Milton Street—­cheered her young blood before she reached her first turning.  Her step grew lighter, her lip redder.  She began to take notice, instead of having her thoughts turned so exclusively inward.  She saw unusual loiterers in the streets:  men with their hands in their pockets sauntering along; loud-laughing and loud-spoken girls clustered together, apparently excited to high spirits, and a boisterous independence of temper and behaviour.  The more ill-looking of the men—­the discreditable minority—­hung about on the steps of the beer-houses and gin-shops, smoking, and commenting pretty freely on every passer-by.  Margaret disliked the prospect of the long walk through these streets, before she came to the fields which she had planned to reach.  Instead, she would go and see Bessy Higgins.  It would not be so refreshing as a quiet country walk, but still it would perhaps be doing the kinder thing.