\"there\"s iron, they say, in all our blood,and a grain or two perhaps is good;but his, he makes me harshly feel,has got a little too much of steel.\"

anon.

\"margaret!\" said mr. hale, as he returned from showing his guestdownstairs; \"i could not help watching your face with some anxiety,when mr. thornton made his confession of hāving been a shop-boy. iknew it all along from mr. bell; so i was aware of what was ing;but i half expected to see you get up and leāve the room.\"

\"oh, papa! you don\"t mean that you thought me so silly? i really likedthat account of himself better than anything else he said. everythingelse revolted me, from its hardness; but he spoke about himself sosimply--with so little of the pretence that makes the vulgarity of shop-people, and with such tender respect for his mother, that i was lesslikely to leāve the room then than when he was boasting about milton,as if there was not such another place in the world; or quietly professingto despise people for careless, wasteful improvidence, without everseeming to think it his duty to try to make them different,--to give themanything of the training which his mother gāve him, and to which heevidently owes his position, whatever that may be. no! his statement ofhāving been a shop-boy was the thing i liked best of all.\"

\"i am surprised at you, margaret,\" said her mother. \"you who werealways accusing people of being shoppy at helstone! i don\"t i think, mr.

hale, you hāve done quite right in introducing such a person to us

without telling us what he had been. i really was very much afraid ofshowing him how much shocked i was at some parts of what he said.

his father \"dying in miserable circumstances.\" why it might hāve beenin the workhouse.\"

\"i am not sure if it was not worse than being in the workhouse,\" repliedher husband. \"i heard a good deal of his previous life from mr. bellbefore we came here; and as he has told you a part, i will fill up what heleft out. his father speculated wildly, failed, and then killed himself,because he could not bear the disgrace. all his former friends shrunkfrom the disclosures that had to be made of his dishonest gambling-wild,hopeless struggles, made with other people\"s money, to regain hisown moderate portion of wealth. no one came forwards to help themother and this boy. there was another child, i believe, a girl; tooyoung to earn money, but of course she had to be kept. at least, nofriend came forwards immediately, and mrs. thornton is not one, ifancy, to wait till tardy kindness es to find her out. so they leftmilton. i knew he had gone into a shop, and that his earnings, withsome fragment of property secured to his mother, had been made tokeep them for a long time. mr. bell said they absolutely lived uponwater-porridge for years--how, he did not know; but long after thecreditors had given up hope of any payment of old mr. thornton\"s debts(if, indeed, they ever had hoped at all about it, after his suicide,) thisyoung man returned to milton, and went quietly round to each creditor,paying him the first instalment of the money owing to him. no noise-nogathering together of creditors--it was done very silently and quietly,but all was paid at last; helped on materially by the circumstance of oneof the creditors, a crabbed old fellow (mr. bell says), taking in mr.

thornton as a kind of partner.\"

\"that really is fine,\" said margaret. \"what a pity such a nature should betainted by his position as a milton manufacturer.\"