"I'm jealous of your good name, Tom, jealous of evil influence."
"Evil influence? What evil influence?"
"Going to the Thorn and Thistle has done you a great deal of harm; it has caused you to give up your Young Men's Class, and—and—but there, I needn't talk any more about it. You understand what I mean. It must be either one or the other, Tom."
"You mean that I must either give up you or Polly Powell?"
"It means more than that," replied the girl, "it means that you must either give up me or give up going to the Thorn and Thistle. You used to be a teetotaler, Tom."
"As though any lad's a teetotaler in these days," laughed the young fellow. "Come now, Alice, you are not so narrow-minded as that. I am nearly twenty-three now, and if I want a glass of beer surely I can have it. You don't mean to say that everybody but teetotalers are going to the bad."
"You know very well what I mean, Tom. You are not the kind of young man you were, and either you give up these things or we part company."
"Nay, Alice, doan't be narrow-minded. I suppose," he added bitterly, "that you are beginning to look higher than me, that you are thinking o' one of the manufacturers. I hear that Harry Briarfield was up at your house to supper the other night."
They had by this time left the Liverpool Road and had entered Scott's Park, which during the last few years had become a rendezvous for the people of the town, especially on Sunday afternoons.
"You know," went on the girl, "that it made no difference to me when people told me that I was choosing a weaver. I didn't think about it, I only thought of you. But, Tom, I shall never marry any one who—who can find his pleasure in such places as the Thorn and Thistle, and who sneers at Sunday School."