arranging my words, than I otherwise should.

'She shall see I know something worth knowing, though it mayn't be her
dead-and-gone languages,' thought I.

'I see,' said the minister, at length. 'I understand it all. You've a
clear, good head of your own, my lad,--choose how you came by it.'

'From my father,' said I, proudly. 'Have you not heard of his discovery
of a new method of shunting? It was in the Gazette. It was patented. I
thought every one had heard of Manning's patent winch.'

'We don't know who invented the alphabet,' said he, half smiling, and
taking up his pipe.

'No, I dare say not, sir,' replied I, half offended; 'that's so long
ago.' Puff--puff--puff.

'But your father must be a notable man. I heard of him once before; and
it is not many a one fifty miles away whose fame reaches Heathbridge.'

'My father is a notable man, sir. It is not me that says so; it is Mr
Holdsworth, and--and everybody.'

'He is right to stand up for his father,' said cousin Holman, as if she
were pleading for me.

I chafed inwardly, thinking that my father needed no one to stand up
for him. He was man sufficient for himself.

'Yes--he is right,' said the minister, placidly. 'Right, because it
comes from his heart--right, too, as I believe, in point of fact. Else
there is many a young cockerel that will stand upon a dunghill and crow
about his father, by way of making his own plumage to shine. I should
like to know thy father,' he went on, turning straight to me, with a
kindly, frank look in his eyes.

But I was vexed, and would take no notice. Presently, having finished
his pipe, he got up and left the room. Phillis put her work hastily
down, and went after him. In a minute or two she returned, and sate
down again. Not long after, and before I had quite recovered my good
temper, he opened the door out of which he had passed, and called to me
to come to him. I went across a narrow stone passage into a strange,
many-cornered room, not ten feet in area, part study, part counting
house, looking into the farm-yard; with a desk to sit at, a desk to
stand at, a Spittoon, a set of shelves with old divinity books upon
them; another, smaller, filled with books on farriery, farming,
manures, and such subjects, with pieces of paper containing memoranda
stuck against the whitewashed walls with wafers, nails, pins, anything
that came readiest to hand; a box of carpenter's tools on the floor,
and some manuscripts in short-hand on