"They are cousins, you know," said Lady Anna. "And there was a little girl there I loved so much."
"They can't but despise me, you know," said the tailor.
"Why should any one despise you?"
"No one should,—unless I be mean and despicable. But they do,—you may be sure. It is only human nature that they should. We are made of different fabric,—though the stuff was originally the same. I don't think I should be at my ease with them. I should be half afraid of their gilt and their gingerbread, and should be ashamed of myself because I was so. I should not know how to drink wine with them, and should do a hundred things which would make them think me a beast."
"I don't see why you shouldn't hold up your head with any man in England," said Lady Anna.
"And so I ought;—but I shouldn't. I should be awed by those whom I feel to be my inferiors. I had rather not. We had better keep to ourselves, dear!" But the girl begged for some delay. It was a matter that required to be considered. If it were necessary for her to quarrel with all her cousins for the sake of her husband,—with the bright fainéant young Earl, with aunts Jane and Julia, with her darling Minnie, she would do so. The husband should be to her in all respects the first and foremost. For his sake, now that she had resolved that she would be his, she would if necessary separate herself from all the world. She had withstood the prayers of her mother, and she was sure that nothing else could move her. But if the cousins were willing to accept her husband, why should he not be willing to be accepted? Pride in him might be as weak as pride in them. If they would put out their hands to him, why should he refuse to put out his own? "Give me a day, Daniel, to think about it." He gave her the day, and then that great decider of all things, Sir William, came to him, congratulating him, bidding him be of good cheer, and saying fine things of the Lovel family generally. Our tailor received him courteously, having learned to like the man, understanding that he had behaved with honesty and wisdom in regard to his client, and respecting him as one of the workers of the day; but he declared that for the Lovel family, as a family,—"he did not care for them particularly." "They are poles asunder from me," he said.
"Not so," replied Sir William. "They were poles asunder, if you will. But by your good fortune and merit, if you will allow me to say so, you have travelled from the one pole very far towards the other."
"I like my own pole a deal the best, Sir William."
"I am an older man than you, Mr. Thwaite, and allow me to assure you that you are wrong."
"Wrong in preferring those who work for their bread to those who eat it in idleness?"