distance from the eyes.  Now, in Mr. Thornton’s face the straight brows fell low over the clear, deep-set earnest eyes, which, without being unpleasantly sharp, seemed intent enough to penetrate into the very heart and core of what he was looking at.  The lines in the face were few but firm, as if they were carved in marble, and lay principally about the lips, which were slightly compressed over a set of teeth so faultless and beautiful as to give the effect of sudden sunlight when the rare bright smile, coming in an instant and shining out of the eyes, changed the whole look from the severe and resolved expression of a man ready to do and dare everything, to the keen honest enjoyment of the moment, which is seldom shown so fearlessly and instantaneously except by children.  Margaret liked this smile; it was the first thing she had admired in this new friend of her father’s; and the opposition of character, shown in all these details of appearance she had just been noticing, seemed to explain the attraction they evidently felt towards each other.

She rearranged her mother’s worsted-work, and fell back into her own thoughts—­as completely forgotten by Mr. Thornton as if she had not been in the room, so thoroughly was he occupied in explaining to Mr. Hale the magnificent power, yet delicate adjustment of the might of the steam-hammer, which was recalling to Mr. Hale some of the wonderful stories of subservient genii in the Arabian Nights—­one moment stretching from earth to sky and filling all the width of the horizon, at the next obediently compressed into a vase small enough to be borne in the hand of a child.

’And this imagination of power, this practical realisation of a gigantic thought, came out of one man’s brain in our good town.  That very man has it within him to mount, step by step, on each wonder he achieves to higher marvels still.  And I’ll be bound to say, we have many among us who, if he were gone, could spring into the breach and carry on the war which compels, and shall compel, all material power to yield to science.’

’Your boast reminds me of the old lines—­“I’ve a hundred captains in England,” he said, “As good as ever was he."’

At her father’s quotation Margaret looked suddenly up, with inquiring wonder in her eyes.  How in the world had they got from cog-wheels to Chevy Chace?

‘It is no boast of mine,’ replied Mr. Thornton; ’it is plain matter-of-fact.  I won’t deny that I am proud of belonging to a town—­or perhaps I should rather say a district—­the necessities of which give birth to such grandeur of conception.  I would rather be a man toiling, suffering—­nay, failing and successless—­here, than lead a dull prosperous life in the old worn grooves of what you call more aristocratic society down in the South, with their slow days of careless ease.  One may be clogged with honey and unable to rise and fly.’