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 like your frames and shears: in your own house you seem different.”

“To those of my own house I am no alien, which I am to these English clowns. I might act the benevolent with them, but acting is not my forte. I find them irrational, perverse; they hinder me when I long to hurry forward. In treating them justly, I fulfil my whole duty towards them.”

“You don’t expect them to love you, of course?”

“Nor wish it.”

“Ah!” said the monitress, shaking her head, and heaving a deep sigh. With this ejaculation, indicative that she perceived a screw to be loose somewhere, but that it was out of her reach to set it right, she bent over her grammar, and sought the rule and exercise for the day.

“I suppose I am not an affectionate man, Caroline; the attachment of a very few suffices me.”

“If you please, Robert, will you mend me a pen or two before you go?”

“First, let me rule your book, for you always contrive to draw the lines aslant. There now. And now for the pens: you like a fine one, I think?”

“Such as you generally make for me and Hortense; not your own broad points.”

“If I were of Louis’s calling, I might stay at home and dedicate this morning to you and your studies; whereas I must spend it in Sykes’ wool-warehouse.”

“You will be making money.”