"Now I call that a downright nice sort of young chap," Mrs. Holl said, as their visitor departed, "good-hearted and good-natured, without no sort of nonsense. He just sits himself down and makes himself at home as if he was one of the family, and I was able to go on with my washing just as if he hadn't been here."
For a time Harry did not answer.
"So, that's a gentleman," he said at last, in a low voice, as if thinking aloud; "I have never spoken to a gentleman before."
"Well, lad," Sarah Holl said, "there ain't much difference between the gentry and other sorts. I don't see very much of them myself in the houses I goes to, but I hears plenty about them from the servants' talk; and, judging from that, a great many of them 'as just as nasty and unpleasant ways as other people."
"I suppose," Harry said thoughtfully, "there can't be much difference in real nature between them and us; there must, of course, be good and bad among them; but there is more difference in their way of talking than I expected."
"Well, of course, Harry; they have had education, that accounts for it; just the same as you, who have educated yourself wonderful, talks different to John and me and the rest of us."
"Yes," Harry said; "but I am not talking about mistakes in grammar; it's the tone of voice, and the way of speaking that's so different. Now why should that be, mother?"
"I suppose a good deal of it," Mrs. Holl answered, "is because they are brought up in nusseries, and they can't run about the house, or holloa or shout to each other in the streets. D' ye see they are taught to speak quiet, and they hear their fathers and mothers, and people round them, speaking quiet. You dun't know, Harry, how still it is in some of them big houses, you seem half afraid to speak above a whisper."
"Yes, but I don't think he spoke lower than I do, mother, or than the rest of us. O mother!" he went on, after a while, "isn't he good? Just to think of his spending an hour and a half sitting here, showing me how to construe. Why, I see the whole thing in a different way now; he has made clear all sorts of things that I could not understand; and he said he would come again too, and I am quite sure that when he says a thing he means to do it. I don't believe he could tell a lie if he tried. And is he not good-looking too?"
"He is a pleasant-looking young chap," Mrs. Holl replied, "but I should not call him anything out of the way. Now I should call you a better-looking chap than he is, Harry."