it, may swell like the budding vegetation in yonder garden on this spring day, may feel ripe to evolve in foliage—perhaps blossom; but he must not encourage the pleasant impulse; he must invoke prudence to check it, with the frosty breath of hers, which is as nipping as any north wind.”

“No cottage would be happy then.”

“When I speak of poverty, I do not so much mean the natural, habitual poverty of the working-man, as the embarrassed penury of the man in debt; my grub-worm is always a straitened, struggling, careworn tradesman.”

“Cherish hope, not anxiety. Certain ideas have become too fixed in your mind. It may be presumptuous to say it, but I have the impression that there is something wrong with your notions of the best means of attaining happiness; as there is in——” Second hesitation.

“I am all ear, Caroline.”

“In—(courage! let me speak the truth)—in your manner—mind, I say only manner—to these Yorkshire workpeople.”

“You have often wanted to tell me that, have you not?”

“Yes; often—very often.”

“The faults of my manner are, I think, only negative. I am not proud: what has a man in my position to be proud of? I am only taciturn, phlegmatic, and joyless.”

“As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines