Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/177

 Still no answer. At last he said: "I tell you, mother, that there was no inquest—no inquiry. No judicial inquiry, I mean."

"Betsy says that Woolmer (some man she knows, who is in a grocer's shop out at Crampton) can swear that Miss Hale was at the station at that hour, walking backwards and forwards with a young man."

"I don't see what we have to do with that. Miss Hale is at liberty to please herself."

"I'm glad to hear you say so," said Mrs. Thornton, eagerly. "It certainly signifies very little to us—not at all to you, after what has passed! but I–I made a promise to Mrs. Hale, that I would not allow her daughter to go wrong without advising and remonstrating with her. I shall certainly let her know my opinion of such conduct."

"I do not see any harm in what she did that evening," said Mr. Thornton, getting up, and coming near to his mother; he stood by the chimney-piece with his face turned away from the room.

"You would not have approved of Fanny's being seen out, after dark, in rather a lonely place, walking about with a young man. I say nothing of the taste which could choose the time, when her mother lay unburied, for such a promenade. Should you have liked your sister to have been noticed by a grocer's assistant for doing so?"

"In the first place, as it is not many years since I myself was a draper's assistant, the mere circumstance of a grocer's assistant noticing any act does not alter the character of the act to me. And in the next place, I see a great deal of difference between Miss Hale and Fanny. I can imagine that the one