Chapter 11 - Page 2

that his earnings, with some fragment of property secured to his
mother, had been made to keep them for a long time. Mr. Bell said
they absolutely lived upon water-porridge for years--how, he did
not know; but long after the creditors had given up hope of any
payment of old Mr. Thornton's debts (if, indeed, they ever had
hoped at all about it, after his suicide,) this young man
returned to Milton, and went quietly round to each creditor,
paying him the first instalment of the money owing to him. No
noise--no gathering together of creditors--it was done very
silently and quietly, but all was paid at last; helped on
materially by the circumstance of one of the creditors, a crabbed
old fellow (Mr. Bell says), taking in Mr. Thornton as a kind of
partner.'

'That really is fine,' said Margaret. 'What a pity such a nature
should be tainted by his position as a Milton manufacturer.'

'How tainted?' asked her father.

'Oh, papa, by that testing everything by the standard of wealth.
When he spoke of the mechanical powers, he evidently looked upon
them only as new ways of extending trade and making money. And
the poor men around him--they were poor because they were
vicious--out of the pale of his sympathies because they had not
his iron nature, and the capabilities that it gives him for being
rich.'

'Not vicious; he never said that. Improvident and self-indulgent
were his words.'

Margaret was collecting her mother's working materials, and
preparing to go to bed. Just as she was leaving the room, she
hesitated--she was inclined to make an acknowledgment which she
thought would please her father, but which to be full and true
must include a little annoyance. However, out it came.

'Papa, I do think Mr. Thornton a very remarkable man; but
personally I don't like him at all.'

'And I do!' said her father laughing. 'Personally, as you call
it, and all. I don't set him up for a hero, or anything of that
kind. But good night, child. Your mother looks sadly tired
to-night, Margaret.'

Margaret had noticed her mother's jaded appearance with anxiety
for some time past, and this remark of her father's sent her up
to bed with a dim fear lying like a weight on her heart. The life
in Milton was so different from what Mrs. Hale had been
accustomed to live in Helstone, in and out perpetually into the
fresh and open air; the air itself was so different, deprived of
all revivifying principle as it seemed to be here; the domestic
worries pressed so very closely, and in so new and sordid a form,
upon all the women in the family, that there was good reason to
fear that her mother's health might be becoming seriously
affected. There were several other signs of something