Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/253

 should remember that all men are not as free to express what they feel as you are. Let us talk of something else." For though his heart leaped up, as at a trumpet-call, to every word that Mr. Bell had said, and though he knew that what he had said would henceforward bind the thought of the old Oxford Fellow closely up with the most precious things of his heart, yet he would not be forced into any expression of what he felt towards Margaret. He was no mocking-bird of praise, to try because another extolled what he reverenced and passionately loved, to outdo him in laudation. So he turned to some of the dry matters of business that lay between Mr. Bell and him, as landlord and tenant.

"What is that heap of brick and mortar we came against in the yard? Any repairs wanted?"

"No, none, thank you."

"Are you building on your own account? If you are, I'm very much obliged to you."

"I'm building a dining-room—for the men I mean—the hands."

"I thought you were hard to please, if this room wasn't good enough to satisfy you, a bachelor."

"I've got acquainted with a strange kind of chap, and I put one or two children in whom he is interested to school. So, as I happened to be passing near his house one day, I just went there about some trifling payment to be made; and I saw such a miserable black frizzle of a dinner—a greasy cinder of meat, as first set me a-thinking. But it was not till provisions grew so high this winter that I bethought me how, by buying things wholesale,