t?" said Elizabeth, demurely.

"And if silence is the thing to be desired, I shall be all the more
likely to keep silence to others, if you give me the right and true
version of troubles past, and of troubles possible in the future, with
regard to this matter. Will you take up your work again, and tell me
all? Or shall I come another time, Miss Elizabeth?"

But Miss Elizabeth had little to add to the story which her father had
told. Jacob was hard, she supposed, just as business men were obliged
to be hard sometimes. But then Mr Fleming was not to be regarded just
as another man in the same position might be regarded--especially he was
not to be so regarded by her brother Jacob. In the sore troubles that
had come into the old man's life. Jacob had had a part. What part
Elizabeth did not know she did not even know the nature of the trouble,
but she knew, though she had only learned it lately, that the very sight
of her brother was like wormwood to Mr Fleming; that even Mrs Fleming,
friendly and sweet to all the world, was cold and distant to Jacob. And
all this seemed to Elizabeth a sufficient reason why he should be more
gentle and forbearing with them than with others, that he should be
willing to forego his just claims rather than to lay himself open to the
charge of wishing or even seeming to be "hard on them."

"For what is a little land, more or less, to Jacob, who has so much?
And why should he wish to take even a small part of what old Mr Fleming
has worked so hard to improve--has put his life into, as one may say?"

"But does he want to take it? Have you ever spoken to your brother
about this?"

"He is supposed to want it for the site of the new buildings to be put
up for the manufacturing company--if it ever comes into existence. But
he does not want it without a sufficient allowance to the old man for
it. Only, I suppose, the debt would cover it all. But I have never
spoken about it to Jacob. It is not easy to speak to him about business
unless he wishes," said Elizabeth, hesitating. "But Clifton, who is
quite inclined to be hard on Jacob, laughs at the idea of his doing
unjustly or even severely by Mr Fleming."

"At least he has done nothing yet, it seems."

"No, Clifton says that Mr Fleming's dislike of Jacob has become a sort
of mania with him, and that he would not yield to him even if it were
for his own advantage--he has brooded over his trouble so long and so
sadly, poor old man!"