And all the time that these fancies chased each other through his excited brain this lad of twenty retained a saner self which stood outside the other and smiled, and told him that he was an infatuated young fool, a moonstruck idiot, to tumble headlong into love with a girl of whom he knew nothing except that she was as far above him, and of all thought of him, as the stars are above the sea.
And he was right in thinking that there was not a man in all that crowd of his rough fellow-workmen who would not have jeered at him and looked down upon him as a hopeless ass if they had known what his thoughts and feelings were. But for all that there was the making in Bram Elshaw, with his dreams and his fancies, of a man who would rise to be master of them all.
Out of the heat of the furnace and the glowing iron Bram Elshaw presently passed into the heat of the sun, and stood for a moment, his long rod in his hand, and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. And before he could turn to go back again he heard a little sound behind him which was not a rustle, or a flutter, or anything he could describe, but which he knew to be the sound of a woman moving quickly in her skirts. And the next moment Miss Biron appeared a couple of feet away from him, smiling and growing a little pink as a young girl does when she feels herself slightly embarrassed by an unaccustomed situation.
Before she spoke Bram guessed by the position in which she held her little closed right hand that she was going to offer him money. And he drew himself up a little, and blushed a much deeper red than the girl—not with anger, for after all was it not just what he might have expected? But with a keener sense than ever of the difference between them.
Miss Biron had begun to speak, had got as far as “I wanted to thank you for explaining everything so nicely,” when something in his look caused her to stop and hesitate and look down.
She was suddenly struck with the fact that this was no common workman, this pale, grimy young Yorkshireman with the strong jaw and the clear, steady eyes, although he was dressed in an old shirt blackened by coal dust, and trousers packed with pieces of sacking tied round with string.
“Ah’m reeght glad to ha’ been of any service to yer, Miss,” said Bram in a very gentle tone.
There was a moment’s silence, during which Miss Biron finally made up her mind what to do. Looking up quickly, with the blush still in her face, she said, “Thank you very much. Good-morning,” and, to Bram’s great relief, turned away without offering him the money.