The moment her brother came from the workshop, Alice
said to him—
“Are you ready, Arthur? We had better be
moving!”
Arthur was a gentle creature, and seldom opposed her;
he seemed only surprised a little, and asked if she
was ill. But Richard, who had all the week been
looking forward to a talk with Alice, and wanted to
show her his little library, was much disappointed,
and begged her to change her mind. She insisted,
however, and he put on his hat to walk with them.
But his aunt called him, and whispered that she would
be particularly obliged to him if he would go to church
with her that evening. He expostulated, saying
he did not care to go to church; but as she insisted,
he yielded, though not with the best grace.
Before another Sunday, there came, doubtless by his
aunt’s management, an invitation to spend a
few weeks with his grandfather, the blacksmith.
Richard was not altogether pleased, for he did not
like leaving his work; but his aunt again prevailed
with him, and he agreed to go. In this, as in
most things, he showed her a deference such as few
young men show their mothers. Her influence came,
I presume, through the strong impression of purpose
she had made on him.
His uncle objected to his going, and grumbled a good
deal. As the brewer looks down on the baker,
so the bookbinder looked down on the blacksmith.
He said the people Richard would see about his grandfather,
were not fit company for the heir of Mortgrange!
But he knew the necessity of his going somewhere for
a while, and gave in.
SIMON ARMOUR.
Simon Armour was past only the agility, not the strength
of his youth, and in his feats of might and skill
he cherished pride. Without being offensively
conceited, he regarded himself—and well
might—as the superior of any baronet such
as his daughter’s husband, and desired of him
no recognition of the relationship. All he looked
for from any man, whether he stood above or beneath
his own plane, was proper pay for good work, and natural
human respect. Some of the surrounding gentry,
possibly not uninfluenced, in sentiment at least,
by the growing radicalism of the age, enjoyed the
free, jolly, but unpresuming carriage of the stalwart
old man, to whom, if indeed on his head the almond-tree
was already in blossom, the grasshopper was certainly
not yet a burden: he could still ply a sledge-hammer
in each hand. “My lord,” came from
his lips in a clear, ringing tone of good-fellowship,
which the nobleman who occasionally stopped at his
forge to give him some direction about the shoeing
of this or that horse, liked well to hear, and felt
the friendlier for—though I doubt if he
would have welcomed it from a younger man.
