“You are mistaken,” said Margaret, roused by the aspersion on her beloved South to a fond vehemence of defence, that brought the colour into her cheeks and the angry tears into her eyes. “You do not know anything about the South. If there is less adventure or less progress—I suppose I must not say less excitement—from the gambling spirit of trade, which seems requisite to force out these wonderful inventions, there is less suffering also. I see men here going about in the streets who look ground down by some pinching sorrow or care—who are not only sufferers but haters. Now, in the South we have our poor, but there is not that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of injustice which I see here. You do not know the South, Mr. Thornton,” she concluded, collapsing into a determined silence, and angry with herself for having said so much.
“And may I say you do not know the North?” asked he, with an inexpressible gentleness in his tone, as he saw that he had really hurt her. She continued resolutely silent; yearning after the lovely haunts she had left far away in Hampshire, with a passionate longing that made her feel her voice would be unsteady and trembling if she spoke.
“At any rate, Mr. Thornton,” said Mrs. Hale, “you will allow that Milton is a much more smoky, dirty town than you will ever meet with in the South.”
“I’m afraid I must give up its cleanliness,” said Mr. Thornton, with the quick gleaming smile. “But we are bidden by Parliament to burn our own smoke; so I suppose, like good little children, we shall do as we are bid—some time.”
Nicholas Higgins Discusses Religion with the Retired Clergyman
From North and South.
The Rev. William Gaskell, who, along with his gifted wife, did so much during the “Hungry Forties” as a peacemaker between the masters and the men, was often to be found in the homes of the Manchester poor listening to their tale of woe, and like Mr. Hale, he always treated the poor with marked courtesy and kindness.
She wondered how her father and Higgins had got on.
In the first place, the decorous, kind-hearted, simple, old-fashioned gentleman had unconsciously called out, by his own refinement and courteousness of manner, all the latent courtesy in the other.