“What can there be in your look, Brown?” said Hardy, when he could speak again, “to frighten Grey so? Did you see what a fright he was in at once, at the idea of turning you into the night schools? There must be some lurking Protestantism in your face somewhere, which I hadn't detected.”
“I don't believe he was frightened at me a bit. He wouldn't have you either, remember,” said Tom.
“Well, at any rate, that doesn't look as if it were all mere Gothic-mouldings and man-millinery, does it?” said Hardy.
Tom sipped his tea, and considered.
“One can't help admiring him, do you know, for it,” he said. “Do you think he is really thrown back, now, in his own reading by this teaching?”
“I'm sure of it. He is such a quiet fellow, that nothing else is likely to draw him off reading; I can see that he doesn't get on as he used, day by day. Unless he makes it up somehow, he won't get his first.”
“He don't seem to like the teaching work much,” said Tom.
“Not at all, so far as I can see.”
“Then it is a very fine thing of him,” said Tom.
“And you retract your man-millinery dictum, so far as he is concerned?”