Harry says that he has decided to make his home in or near London."
"Then he is going to leave the mill?"
"Yes."
"What is he thinking of?"
"Music or art. He has no settled plans. He says he must settle his home first."
"Well, when Harry can give up thee and me for that girl, we need not think much of ourselves. I feel a bit humiliated by being put below her."
"Don't look at it in that way, mother."
"Nay, but I can't help it. I wonder wherever Harry got his fool notions. He was brought up in the mill and for the mill, and I've always heard say that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined."
"That is only a half-truth, mother. You have the nature of the tree to reckon with. You may train a willow-tree all you like but you will never make it an oak or an ash. Here is Harry who has been trained for a cotton-spinner turns back on us and says he will be an artist or a singer, and what can we do about it? It is past curing or altering now."
But though the late owner of Hatton Mill had left the clearest instructions concerning its relation to his two sons, the matter was not easily settled. He had tied both of them so clearly down to his will in the matter that it was found impossible to alter a tittle of his directions. Practically it amounted to a just division of whatever the mill had