Chapter 20

CHAPTER XX - MEN AND GENTLEMEN

'Old and young, boy, let 'em all eat, I have it;

Let 'em have ten tire of teeth a-piece, I care not.'

ROLLO, DUKE OF NORMANDY.

Margaret went home so painfully occupied with what she had heard
and seen that she hardly knew how to rouse herself up to the
duties which awaited her; the necessity for keeping up a constant
flow of cheerful conversation for her mother, who, now that she
was unable to go out, always looked to Margaret's return from the
shortest walk as bringing in some news.

'And can your factory friend come on Thursday to see you
dressed?'

'She was so ill I never thought of asking her,' said Margaret,
dolefully.

'Dear! Everybody is ill now, I think,' said Mrs. Hale, with a
little of the jealousy which one invalid is apt to feel of
another. 'But it must be very sad to be ill in one of those
little back streets.' (Her kindly nature prevailing, and the old
Helstone habits of thought returning.) 'It's bad enough here.
What could you do for her, Margaret? Mr. Thornton has sent me
some of his old port wine since you went out. Would a bottle of
that do her good, think you?'

'No, mamma! I don't believe they are very poor,--at least, they
don't speak as if they were; and, at any rate, Bessy's illness is
consumption--she won't want wine. Perhaps, I might take her a
little preserve, made of our dear Helstone fruit. No! there's
another family to whom I should like to give--Oh mamma, mamma!
how am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart
parties, after the sorrow I have seen to-day?' exclaimed
Margaret, bursting the bounds she had preordained for herself
before she came in, and telling her mother of what she had seen
and heard at Higgins's cottage.

It distressed Mrs. Hale excessively. It made her restlessly
irritated till she could do something. She directed Margaret to
pack up a basket in the very drawing-room, to be sent there and
then to the family; and was almost angry with her for saying,
that it would not signify if it did not go till morning, as she
knew Higgins had provided for their immediate wants, and she
herself had left money with Bessy. Mrs. Hale called her unfeeling
for saying this; and never gave herself breathing-time till the
basket was sent out of the house. Then she said:

'After all, we may have been doing wrong. It was only the last
time Mr. Thornton was here that he said, those were no true
friends who helped to prolong the struggle by assisting the turn
outs. And this Boucher-man was a turn-out, was he not?'

The question was referred to Mr. Hale by his wife, when he came
up-stairs, fresh from giving a lesson to Mr. Thornton, which had
ended in