He looked at Alice in a pretty pink muslin dress of fashionable make with a surprise as great as that with which she had glanced at him, for he had never before seen a lady in full evening dress.
Presently he said to her quietly, "I know I never say the right thing, Miss Merton, and I daresay it is quite wrong for me to express any personal opinions, but you do look—"
"No, Jack; that is quite the wrong thing to say. You may say, Miss Merton, your dress is a most becoming one, although even that you could not be allowed to say except to some one with whom you are very intimate. There are as many various shades of compliment as there are of intimacy. A brother may say to a sister, You look stunning to-night—that is a very slang word, Jack—and she will like it. A stranger or a new acquaintance may not say a word which would show that he observes a lady is not attired in a black walking dress."
"And what is the exact degree of intimacy in which one may say as you denoted, 'Miss Merton, your dress is a most becoming one?'"
"I should say," the girl said gravely, "it might be used by a cousin or by an old gentleman, a friend of the family."
Then with a laugh she went off to receive the guests, now beginning to arrive in earnest.
After this Mr. Merton made a point of having an "at home" every fourth Saturday, and these soon became known as among the most pleasant and sociable gatherings in the literary and scientific world of Birmingham.
So young Jack Simpson led a dual life, spending twenty-six days of each month as a pit lad, speaking a dialect nearly as broad as that of his fellows, and two as a quiet and unobtrusive young student in the pleasant home of Mr. Merton.
Before a year had passed the one life seemed as natural to him as the other. Even with his friends he kept them separate, seldom speaking of Stokebridge when at Birmingham, save to answer Mr. Merton's questions as to old pupils; and giving accounts, which to Nelly Hardy appeared ridiculously meagre, of his Birmingham experience to his friends at home.
This was not from any desire to be reticent, but simply because the details appeared to him to be altogether uninteresting to his friends.