Then, being thus set a-going, I talked, too, of the model, and our labours, and again of my ambition to get to be an engineer in order to help him, little thinking how I had turned myself into a special pleader to the advancement of my poor friend’s cause.
At last, half-ashamed of my earnestness, I looked inquiringly in my companion’s face, to find that she was listening intently, and she looked up at me as I ceased.
“And this Mr—Mr Hallett,” she said softly, “is still a workman in Messrs Ruddle and Lister’s employ?”
“Oh no! Miss Carr,” I exclaimed; “he told me he could never enter the place again, and that he dared not trust himself to meet Mr Lister face to face. He has not been there since, and he never will go there now.”
Miss Carr seemed to breathe more freely as I said these words, and then there was another interval of silence.
“Is Mr Hallett poor?” she asked then.
“Oh yes, very poor,” I said. “He has been obliged to stop his work over his invention sometimes, because the money has to go to buy wine and little choice things for poor Mrs Hallett. She is always repining and talking of the days when she had her conservatory and carriage, and, worst of all, she blames poor Hallett so for his want of ambition. Yes, Miss Carr,” I said, repeating myself to willing ears, “and he is one of the truest and best of men. He was not always a workman, you know.”
“Indeed!” she said; and I saw that she bent her head lower as she listened.
“No,” I said enthusiastically, as I, in my heart, set up Stephen Hallett as the model I meant to imitate. “His father was a surgeon in Warwickshire, and Mr Hallett was at college—at Oxford, where he was working to take honours.”
Miss Carr’s lips parted as she still sat with her head bent.