In a week from that time the master’s face was beginning to be familiar to his work-people; and his business and its details were beginning to be a little less strange to him. Whatever Sebastian thought, felt, or endured, in the change so complete and entire, of habits, customs, and surroundings--and the contrast, and the effort to grow accustomed to it must have been pretty severe at times--he said nothing--made absolutely no remark, but quietly ‘went at it,’ with a cool, calm, comprehensive energy which amazed Wilson and the other secondary officials, and delighted little Mr. Sutcliffe. It seemed as if, from the moment in which the young man had entered the place, work had walked up to him, ready to his hand, and that hand had grappled with it, and that head had bent itself to the understanding of it, without thought or intention of ever turning back, until the task were accomplished. His place was ready for him, and he stepped into it. He had a tenacious memory; he was rather fond of saying that it was the only mental advantage he possessed. He was a very quiet, undemonstrative person--never paraded any likes or dislikes: at the end of a week, his mother was amazed and angry to find, that though he had so completely worsted her on that eventful night when Helena Spenceley had dined with them, yet that she did not discover any pronounced points of character in him--no particular weaknesses or predilections on which she could lay hold, as handles by which to manage him. This annoyed her excessively: she puzzled over it, and tried to find a way out of it, and was, almost unknowingly to herself, nourishing towards her son an attitude which was beginning to be one of opposition. Sebastian’s retentive memory held, amongst the other figures with which it was peopled, that of Myles Heywood in a conspicuous and prominent place. A most distinct impression remained in his mind of the workman’s defiant attitude and words. What Sebastian felt towards the young man would make too long a tale, and involve too much dry psychological analysis, to be here recorded. Mrs. Mallory had most truly told her son that whether she knew his habits or not, she was sure they were not the habits of Thanshope business men. Something happened just about this time--and Sebastian’s method of treating the matter would probably have made the hair of a Thanshope business man stand on end, or called forth from his tongue emphatically Doric epithets as to the young mill-owner’s sanity, and mental capacity in general. Sebastian never beheld Myles’s firmly set lips and sharply contracting eyebrows without wondering whether those strongly marked features were merely signs of an absolutely crabbed disposition and bad temper, or whether they were only traits of a hot temper and quick disposition. He tried in half a dozen ways to find out, but in vain. Myles put on a silent dignity and reserve equal to Sebastian’s own, until at last pure accident put the matter to the test.