"I don't know much about such things, my lady." "You have told--Daniel?" "No, my lady." "Oh, Mr. Thwaite, do not talk to me in that way. It sounds as though you were deserting me." "There'll be no reason for not deserting now. You'll have friends by the score more fit to see you through this than old Thomas Thwaite. And, to own the truth, now that the matter is coming to an end, I am getting weary of it. I'm not so young as I was, and I'd be better left at home to my business." "I hope that you may disregard your business now without imprudence, Mr. Thwaite." "No, my lady;--a man should always stick to his business. I hope that Daniel will do so better than his father before him,--so that his son may never have to go out to be servant to another man." "You are speaking daggers to me." "I have not meant it then. I am rough by nature, I know, and perhaps a little low just at present. There is something sad in the parting of old friends." "Old friends needn't be parted, Mr. Thwaite." "When your ladyship was good enough to point out to me my boy's improper manner of speech to Lady Anna, I knew how it must be. You were quite right, my lady. There can be no becoming friendship between the future Lady Lovel and a journeyman tailor. I was wrong from the beginning." "Oh, Mr. Thwaite! without such wrong where should we have been?" "There can be no holding ground of friendship between such as you and such as we. Lords and ladies, earls and countesses, are our enemies, and we are theirs. We may make their robes and take their money, and deal with them as the Jew dealt with the Christians in the play; but we cannot eat with them or drink with them." "How often have I eaten and drank at your table, when no other table was spread for me?" "You were a Jew almost as ourselves then. We cannot now well stand shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm as friends should do." "How often has my child lain in your arms when she was a baby, and been quieter there than she would be even in her mother's?" "That has all gone by. Other arms will be open to receive her." As the tailor said this he remembered how his boy used to take the little child out to the mountain side, and how the two would ramble away together through the long summer evenings; and he reflected that the memory of those days was no doubt still strong in the heart of his son. Some shadow of the grief which would surely fall upon the young man now fell upon the father, and caused him almost to repent of the work of his life. "Tailors should consort with tailors," he said, "and lords and ladies should consort together."