Doubtless he thought less—for it was only after much deliberation that even such modest hospitality was dispensed at the cottage board at Grimblethorpe, and such occasions were few and far between.
Daniel Walthew was proud of the honour done to Mark, and yet it troubled him for two reasons. The first was because he could not understand that a lady like Mrs. Mitcheson had invited a simple country lad to her house from sheer kindness of heart, and with the single desire to brighten his young life.
Secondly, he felt that Mr. Mitcheson's life path lay on a much higher level than his own, and if Mark got accustomed to mix with grand people, how would he ever come down to that humble part of the road on which was his own rut?
"What do you think about it, Barbara?" he asked his wife.
"That Mrs. Mitcheson is very kind to Mark, and I am very thankful to her."
"But why should she ask him? That's what I want to know. I should like to know what will be the outcome of it."
"Maybe because you are a customer of her husband, and your father went and paid good money to his father. I reckon your custom has been worth a good bit to them from first to last."
"What I am afraid of is that Mark will get stuck-up notions, and when he has done with schooling, he will not want to settle down here again. If I were to see him with a cigar in his mouth, swaggering up and down like some of those empty-headed puppies that think fathers were only meant to work and scrape money together for them to waste, I should almost wish that he had followed the others when he was little."
"There is no better boy than Mark; and what is the worth of the money if neither I nor he is ever to be any the happier for it?" asked Barbara, stung to speak as she had never done before during more than twenty-five years of married life. "Why," she continued, "should Mark be tied to Grimblethorpe? He will be fit for something better, and I hope he will get it."
Very wroth was Daniel Walthew when these rebellious words met his ear. He had not married Barbara to teach him what he ought to do, or talk about money as if she brought him any.