"''Twas liberty and money thrown away. Send your sister, if you have one, to me, and I will teach her without either rod or wages. Will you?'
"'You have an old and a violent antipathy, I believe, to any thing like a school.'
"'True. It was early and violent. Had not you?'
"'No. I went to school with pleasure; for I thought to read and write were accomplishments of some value.'
"'Indeed? Then I misunderstood you just now. I thought you said that, had you the strength of a man, you should prefer the plough and the book to the needle. Whence, supposing you a female, I inferred that you had a woman's love for the needle and a fool's hatred of books.'
"My father calling me from without, I now made a motion to go. 'Stay,' continued he, with great earnestness, throwing aside his knitting-apparatus, and beginning in great haste to pull off his stockings. 'Draw these stockings over your shoes. They will save your feet from the snow while walking to your horse.'
"Half angry, and half laughing, I declined the offer. He had drawn them off, however, and, holding them in his hand, 'Be persuaded,' said he; 'only lift your feet, and I will slip them on in a trice.'
"Finding me positive in my refusal, he dropped the stockings; and, without more ado, caught me up in his arms, rushed out of the room, and, running barefoot through the snow, set me fairly on my horse. All was done in a moment, and before I had time to reflect on his intentions. He then seized my hand, and, kissing it with great fervour, exclaimed, 'A thousand thanks to you for not accepting my stockings. You have thereby saved yourself and me the time and toil of drawing on and drawing off. Since you have taught me to wonder, let me practise the lesson in wondering at your folly, in wearing worsted shoes and silk stockings at a season like this. Take my counsel, and turn your silk to worsted and your worsted to leather. Then may you hope for warm feet and dry. What! Leave the gate without a blessing on your counsellor?'
"I spurred my horse into a gallop, glad to escape from so strange a being. I could give you many instances of behaviour equally singular, and which betrayed a mixture of shrewdness and folly, of kindness and impudence, which justified, perhaps, the common notion that his intellects were unsound. Nothing was more remarkable than his impenetrability to ridicule and censure. You might revile him for hours, and he would listen to you with invincible composure. To awaken anger or shame in him was impossible. He would answer, but in such a way as to show him totally unaware of your true meaning. He would afterwards talk to you with all the smiling affability and freedom of an old friend. Every one despised him for his idleness and folly, no less conspicuous in his words than his actions; but no one feared him, and few were angry with him, till after the detection of his commerce with Betty, and his inhuman treatment of his father."
"Have you good reasons for supposing him to have been illicitly connected with that girl?"