‘There’s one thing fixed and sure, my dear,’ she said, ‘and that is as follows: ayther you must find a mind to wed one of ‘em, or you must pluck up a spirit and tell ‘em you’ll wed nayther.’ ‘I have told Mr. Thistlewood that I can never marry him,’ said Bertha. ‘And what about Lane?’ her mother asked her. ‘I can never marry him either,’ the girl answered steadily. She had her voice under perfect control, but her averted face and the very lines of her figure enlightened the shrewd old mother. ‘Hast told him so?’ she asked. ‘I have told him,’ Bertha answered, ‘never to speak to me again.’ ‘Hoity, toity, deary me!’ cried the old woman. ‘And what says he to that?’ ‘He didn’t greatly seem to care,’ said Bertha, with a beautifully assumed air of indifference. ‘Maybe he didn’t set such store by what you told him as to tek it in earnest?’ ‘Oh,’ said the girl, languidly and indifferently, ‘he knew I meant it.’ ‘And didn’t seem to care? My dear, you’re talkin’ of Lane Protheroe!’ ‘He cared for a minute, perhaps,’ Bertha said, her assumed indifference and languor tinctured with bitterness by this time. ‘He cared for a minute, perhaps; just as he does about everything. I heard him whistling an hour afterwards.’ The disguise was excellent, and might have deceived a woman who had known her less intimately and watched her less closely, but it was transparent to the mother. ‘That’s the trouble, is it?’ said Mrs. Fellowes, gravely betaking herself once more to her knitting. Bertha had been crying already, and had hard work to restrain herself. ‘Look here, my darlin’,’ the mother said, with unwonted tenderness of tone and manner, ‘if you can’t read your own mind, you must let a old experienced woman read it for you. The lad’s as the Lord made him. What we see in any o’ the men to mek a fuss about, the Lord in His mercy only knows; but, to my mind, Lane’s ‘the pick o’ ten thousand. He’s alive, and that’s more than _can_ be said of many on ‘em. He’s a clever lad, he’s well to look at, and he’s well-to-do.’ ‘Mother,’ cried the girl, almost passionately, her own pain wrung her so, ‘he has no heart. He cares for a thing one minute, and doesn’t care for it the next. He pretends--no, he doesn’t pretend--but he thinks he cares, and while he thinks it I suppose he does care. But out of sight is out of mind with him.’ ‘Makest most o’ thine own troubles, like the rest on us,’ said Mrs. Fellowes philosophically. But, in a moment, philosophy made way for motherly kindness, and, rising from her seat, she bestowed her knitting in a roomy pocket and put her arms about her daughter’s waist. ‘Art fond of the lad all the same,’ she said. ‘Ah, my dear, there’s nothin’ likely to be sorer than the natur as picks flies in the things it’s fond on. There’s a deal o’ laughin’ at them as thinks all their geese is swans, but they’re better off in the long run than them as teks all their swans to be geese.’