He nodded, but kept his attention on the book.  His mother just glanced at him, and presently continued: 

’I do hope she won’t be spoilt.  She is very pretty, isn’t she?  But they’re not girls for going out much, I can see.  And Thyrza’s always glad when I ask her to come and have tea with us.  I suppose they haven’t many friends.’

It was quite against Mrs. Grail’s wont to interrupt thus when her son had settled down to read.  Gilbert averted his eyes from the page, and, after reflecting a little, said: 

‘Ackroyd knows them.’

His mother looked at him closely.  He seemed to be absorbed again.

‘Does he speak to you about them, Gilbert?’

‘He’s mentioned them once or twice.’

‘Perhaps that’s why Lydia goes out to chapel,’ the old lady said, with a smile.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

The reply was so abrupt, so nearly impatient, that Mrs. Grail made an end of her remarks.  In a little while she too began to read.

They had supper at nine; at ten o’clock Mrs. Grail kissed her son’s forehead and bade him good-night, adding, ‘Don’t sit long, my dear.’  Every night she took leave of him with the same words, and they were not needless.  Gilbert too often forgot the progress of time, and spent in study the hours which were demanded for sleep.

His daily employment was at a large candle and soap factory.  By such work he had earned his living for more than twenty years.  As a boy, he had begun with wages of four shillings a week, his task being to trim with a knife the rough edges of tablets of soap just stamped out.  By degrees he had risen to a weekly income of forty shillings, occasionally increased by pay for overtime.  Beyond this he was not likely to get.  Men younger than he had passed him, attaining the position of foreman and the like; some had earned money by inventions which they put at the service of their employers; but Gilbert could hope for nothing more than the standing of a trustworthy mechanic, who, as long as he keeps his strength, can count on daily bread.  His heart was not in his work; it would have been strange if be had thriven by an industry which was only a weariness to him.

His hours were from six in the morning to seven at night.  Ah, that terrible rising at five o’clock, when it seemed at first as if he must fall back again in sheer anguish of fatigue, when his eyeballs throbbed to the light and the lids were as if weighted with iron, when the bitterness of the day before him was like poison in his heart!  He could not live as his fellow-workmen did, coming home to satisfy his hunger and spend a couple of hours in recreation, then to well-earned sleep.  Every minute of freedom, of time in which he was no longer a machine but a thinking and desiring man, he held precious as fine gold.  How could he yield to heaviness and sleep, when books lay open before him, and Knowledge, the goddess of his worship, whispered wondrous promises?