“And you will try and love her for my sake, mother?”

“Nay, nay!  If I can’t love the lass for her own sake, I’ll never love her for thy sake.  But if she is thy wife, she will get all the respect due thy wife.  If she can win more, she’ll get more, and that is all there is to it.”

With this concession Harry had to be satisfied.  He brought his wife to the Hall and Mrs. Hatton met her with punctilious courtesy.  She gave her the best guest room and sent her own maid to help her dress.  The little woman was almost frightened by the ceremonious nature of her reception.  But when John came home he called her “Lucy,” and tempered by many little acts of brotherly kindness, that extreme politeness which is harder to bear than hard words.

And as John and his mother sat alone and unhappy after Harry and his wife had bid them good night, John attempted to comfort his mother.  “You carried yourself bravely and kindly, mother,” he said, “but I see that you suffer.  What do you think of her?”

“She is pretty and docile, but she isn’t like a mother of Hatton men.  Look at the pictured women in the corridor upstairs.  They were born to breed and to suckle men of brain and muscles like yourself, John.  The children of little women are apt to be little in some way or other.  Lucy does not look motherly, but Harry is taken up with her.  We must make the best of the match, John, and don’t let the trial of their stay here be too long.  Get them away as soon as possible.”

“Harry says that he has decided to make his home in or near London.”

“Then he is going to leave the mill?”

“Yes.”

“What is he thinking of?”

“Music or art.  He has no settled plans.  He says he must settle his home first.”

“Well, when Harry can give up thee and me for that girl, we need not think much of ourselves.  I feel a bit humiliated by being put below her.”

“Don’t look at it in that way, mother.”

“Nay, but I can’t help it.  I wonder wherever Harry got his fool notions.  He was brought up in the mill and for the mill, and I’ve always heard say that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined.”

“That is only a half-truth, mother.  You have the nature of the tree to reckon with.  You may train a willow-tree all you like but you will never make it an oak or an ash.  Here is Harry who has been trained for a cotton-spinner turns back on us and says he will be an artist or a singer, and what can we do about it?  It is past curing or altering now.”

But though the late owner of Hatton Mill had left the clearest instructions concerning its relation to his two sons, the matter was not easily settled.  He had tied both of them so clearly down to his will in the matter that it was found impossible to alter a tittle of his directions.  Practically it amounted to a just division of whatever the mill had made after the tithe for charities had been first deducted.