Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. II, 1866.djvu/122

112 Mrs Holt looked hard out of the window and gave a slight inarticulate sound of scorn.

Felix had leaned back in his chair with a resigned smile, and was pinching Job's ears.

Esther said, "I think I had better go now," not knowing what else to say, yet not wishing to go immediately, lest she should seem to be running away from Mrs Holt. She felt keenly how much endurance there must be for Felix. And she had often been discontented with her father, and called him tiresome!

"Where does Job Tudge live?" she said, still sitting, and looking at the droll little figure, set oft by a ragged jacket with a tail about two inches deep sticking out above the funniest of corduroys. "Job has two mansions," said Felix. "He lives here chiefly; but he has another home, where his grandfather, Mr Tudge the stone-breaker, lives. My mother is very good to Job, Miss Lyon. She has made him a little bed in a cupboard, and she gives him sweetened porridge."

The exquisite goodness implied in these words of Felix impressed Esther the more, because in her hearing his talk had usually been pungent and denunciatory. Looking at Mrs Holt, she saw that her eyes had lost their bleak north-easterly expres-