She was talkin' to me the other evenin' about it, quite
beautifully; an' I will say that for Sairey, she don't mind my not
understandin', but explains, an' never seems to despise me for my
ignorance,' said his mother.

'I should think not, indeed! Book-learning isn't everything. With all
your experience of life you could teach Sarah a precious sight more than
she can teach you,' said George.

'It's very nice o' you to talk like that, dear; but I know you're both
far above me wi' your beautiful manners an' ways o' talkin',' said the
poor woman humbly.

'For goodness' sake, don't talk like that, mother, or I shall be sorry I
ever went to Eton and Cambridge if it makes you feel any distance between
us!' he cried.

'I don't feel it so much wi' you, dear. It's Sairey I feel it worse wi',
an' it's not 'er fault either; it's only that she's so clever an' so
beautiful.'

'She's good-looking, certainly; but, then, so are you. She's taken after
you, like me.' The young man smiled at his mother in a very pretty way.
He certainly had beautiful manners, as his mother said. 'But as for being
clever,' he continued, 'I call her a proud peacock.'

'Oh George, I was never as good-lookin' as Sairey, nor you either; nor
'alf such a lady. W'y, she might be a duchess's daughter! Every one says
so,' cried his mother, woman-like, dwelling upon the subject of good
looks rather than on her son's criticism of Sarah's cleverness.

'That's only education. You'd have been just as duchessy if you'd been
educated,' insisted her son, hesitating for a word to use instead of
lady-like, for he would not, even to himself, own that his mother was not
a lady in the world's acceptation of the word.

What every one in the West Riding, or heavy woollen district, said was,
what a most extraordinary thing it was that the son and daughter of that
brute Clay should be so refined when their father was such a rough,
uncouth man! The Clay family was one of the many instances in Yorkshire
of the mill-hand who rose from being a labourer to be the owner of a
large mill and enormous wealth, and who gave to his children the
education he had never received himself. But though in most cases the
children were better educated and superior in outward seeming to their
parents, it was not often that the contrast was so marked. In this case
it may have been caused by the fact that Mark Clay, instead of marrying a
mill-lass, had taken to wife a very pretty, delicate-looki