‘All the more do I thank you,’ said Margaret, smiling.  ’Though I don’t believe you:  I believe you have just given way to wife and daughter as much as most men.’

‘And as to Mr. Thornton,’ said Mr. Hale, ’I’ll give you a note to him, which, I think I may venture to say, will ensure you a hearing.’

‘I thank yo’ kindly, sir, but I’d as lief stand on my own bottom.  I dunnot stomach the notion of having favour curried for me, by one as doesn’t know the ins and outs of the quarrel.  Meddling ’twixt master and man is liker meddling ’twixt husband and wife than aught else:  it takes a deal o’ wisdom for to do ony good.  I’ll stand guard at the lodge door.  I’ll stand there fro’ six in the morning till I get speech on him.  But I’d liefer sweep th’ streets, if paupers had na’ got hold on that work.  Dunna yo’ hope, miss.  There’ll be more chance o’ getting milk out of a flint.  I wish yo’ a very good night, and many thanks to yo’.’

’You’ll find your shoe’s by the kitchen fire; I took them there to dry,’ said Margaret.

He turned round and looked at her steadily, and then he brushed his lean hand across his eyes and went his way.

‘How proud that man is!’ said her father, who was a little annoyed at the manner in which Higgins had declined his intercession with Mr. Thornton.

‘He is,’ said Margaret; ’but what grand makings of a man there are in him, pride and all.’

’It’s amusing to see how he evidently respects the part in Mr. Thornton’s character which is like his own.’

’There’s granite in all these northern people, papa, is there not?’

’There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in his wife either.’

’I should guess from their tones that they had Irish blood in them.  I wonder what success he’ll have to-morrow.  If he and Mr. Thornton would speak out together as man to man—­if Higgins would forget that Mr. Thornton was a master, and speak to him as he does to us—­and if Mr. Thornton would be patient enough to listen to him with his human heart, not with his master’s ears—­’

‘You are getting to do Mr. Thornton justice at last, Margaret,’ said her father, pinching her ear.

Margaret had a strange choking at her heart, which made her unable to answer.  ‘Oh!’ thought she, ’I wish I were a man, that I could go and force him to express his disapprobation, and tell him honestly that I knew I deserved it.  It seems hard to lose him as a friend just when I had begun to feel his value.  How tender he was with dear mamma!  If it were only for her sake, I wish he would come, and then at least I should know how much I was abased in his eyes.’

CHAPTER XXXVIII

PROMISES FULFILLED

’Then proudly, proudly up she rose,
Tho’ the tear was in her e’e,
“Whate’er ye say, think what ye may,
Ye’s get na word frae me!"’
Scotch ballad.