'I suppose you are talking about me; but don't I show you any feeling, Luke?' asked Sarah rather reproachfully.
'Yes, miss, of course; and I wasn't thinking of you at the minute, as it happened. I'm sorry I said what I did about Miss Cunningham if it annoyed you, for I know from Naomi how kind you are, and what a true friend to all our family. If I said anything, it was because I was thinking 'twas a pity you didn't take things as the other young lady does, for if you had very likely matters would never have come to this pass.'
Sarah did not answer a word, and the two walked on in silence. Luke Mickleroyd was thinking bitterly of the part his daughter Jane Mary had taken in the day's work, and Sarah's thoughts were not more pleasant.
'I dare say you're right, Luke; but one can't change one's character. If a person's born proud and horrid like me she can't help it; it's her nature to be so,' she said after a pause.
'There's something above nature, Miss Sarah; and though I'm not one to preach, I know you know better than me, not being a scholar, that you can be changed,' replied the man.
Sarah was so surprised at such a speech from a mill-hand that she found no words to reply; but when he had left her, by her desire, at the back of the house, she made her way to her room by the back-stairs, and taking up her favourite attitude on the wide window-seat, sat and gazed out over Ousebank.
'I hate them all! I hate Ousebank, and the mills, and the hands—the ungrateful people; they turned against me even, though they know I have always taken their parts and sympathised with them,' she burst out. Then the words of her uncle came back to her that she would one day regret the attitude she had taken up, and she wondered whether she didn't regret it a little now. And then Luke Mickleroyd's remarks haunted her, and with a sudden impatient movement she got up and went to the door. There she paused irresolutely, and then, half-shamefacedly, she turned back and knelt down by her bedside; and after ten minutes she got up and walked swiftly out of the room and down the stairs, wondering rather at have said; and though she said her prayers night and morning as a matter of habit, she did not remember ever having prayed in the daytime before.