Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/66

 the keenness of the pain was as fresh as ever in her mind.

"Milton-Northern! The manufacturing town in Darkshire?"

"Yes," said he, in the same despondent, indifferent way.

"Why there, papa?" asked she.

"Because there I can earn bread for my family. Because I know no one there, and no one knows Helstone, or can ever talk to me about it."

"Bread for your family! I thought you and mamma had"—and then she stopped, checking her natural interest regarding their future life, as she saw the gathering gloom on her father's brow. But he, with his quick intuitive sympathy, read in her face, as in a mirror, the reflections of his own moody depression, and turned it off with an effort.

"You shall be told all, Margaret. Only help me to tell your mother. I think I could do anything but that: the idea of her distress turns me sick with dread. If I tell you all, perhaps you could break it to her to-morrow. I am going out for the day, to bid farmer Dobson and the poor people on Bracy Common good-bye. Would you dislike breaking it to her very much, Margaret?"

Margaret did dislike it, did shrink from it more than from anything she had ever had to do in her life before. She could not speak, all at once. Her father said, "You dislike it very much, don't you, Margaret?" Then she conquered herself, and said, with a bright strong look on her face:

"It is a painful thing, but it must be done, and I