“You told him I sent you?”
“I dunno, if I ca’d yo’ by your name. I dunnot think I did. I said a woman who knew no better had advised me for to come and see if there was a soft place in his heart.”
“And he—?” asked Margaret.
“Said I were to tell yo’ to mind yo’r own business.—That’s the longest spin yet, my lads.—And them’s civil words to what he used to me. But ne’er mind. We’re but where we was; and I’ll break stones on the road afore I let these little uns clem.”
Margaret put the struggling Johnnie out of her arms, back into his former place on the dresser.
“I am sorry I asked you to go to Mr. Thornton’s. I am disappointed in him.”
There was a slight noise behind her. Both she and Nicholas turned round at the same moment, and there stood Mr. Thornton, with a look of displeased surprise upon his face. Obeying her swift impulse, Margaret passed out before him, saying not a word, only bowing low to hide the sudden paleness that she felt had come over her face. He bent equally low in return, and then closed the door after her. As she hurried to Mrs. Boucher’s, she heard the clang, and it seemed to fill up the measure of her mortification. He too was annoyed to find her there. He had tenderness in his heart—“a soft place,” as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognise his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust in giving so scornful a hearing to any one who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him. That the man had spoken saucily to him when he had the opportunity, was nothing to Mr. Thornton. He rather liked him for it; and he was conscious of his own irritability of temper at the time, which probably made them both quits. It was the five hours of waiting that struck Mr. Thornton. He had not five hours to spare, himself; but one hour—two hours, of his hard penetrating intellectual, as well as bodily labour, did he give up to going about collecting evidence as to the truth of Higgins’s story, the nature of his character, the tenor of his life. He tried not to be, but was convinced that all that Higgins had said was true. And then the conviction went in, as if by some spell, and touched the latent tenderness of his heart; the patience of the man, the simple generosity of the motive (for he had learnt about the quarrel between Boucher and Higgins), made him forget entirely the mere reasonings of justice, and overleap them by a diviner instinct. He came to tell Higgins he would give him work; and he was more annoyed to find Margaret there than by hearing her last words; for then he understood that she was the woman who had urged Higgins to come to him; and he dreaded the admission of any thought of her, as a motive to what he was doing solely because it was right.
“So that was the lady you spoke of as a woman?” said he indignantly to Higgins. “You might have told me who she was.”
“And then, maybe, yo’d have spoken of her more civil than yo’ did; yo’d getten a mother who might ha’ kept yo’r tongue in check when yo’ were talking o’ women being at the root of all the plagues.”
“Of course you told that to Miss Hale?”