Between that expedition to Whaley-Bridge, with its terminal connubial conversation, and the breakage of Augusta Ashton’s collar-bone, rather more than six months intervened—six months during which Mr. Clegg, as his good master had anticipated, felt the solitary state of his trim sitting-room somewhat oppressive, the permission to receive his old friends becoming a nullity on their removal. He occupied a position midway between parlour and kitchen—above his old associates of the porringers, the fireside settle, and the sanded stone floor, and beneath the family seated round the tea-urn, on cushioned chairs and Brussels carpet. Towards the former he cast few backward looks of regret—he had put his past behind him—but, oh! who shall tell his unuttered longings for the “Open Sesame!” to that paradise of which he had had one rapturous glimpse, and one only—that paradise where his master’s daughter, so high above him, moved like a seraph, and filled the air with harmony! I am afraid that at this time he brooded over his orphanhood, and that unknown father who had disappeared so mysteriously, and strained his soaring thoughts in their flight towards possibilities more than was good for him. He was too much alone for one of his years, and there were times in those long candle-lit winter evenings, when books and pencils dropped from his wearied hands, and for lack of a companion he held dreamy converse with the fire. Of course his library was restricted, and there were no institutions in Manchester at that time where young men of his class could meet for mutual improvement, or that mental polish caused by the attrition of mind upon mind. Occasionally, at long intervals, and at first to the utter confusion of James, Captain Travis had inquired for “Mr. Clegg,” and been shown into the little sitting-room, with a disregard to “caste” very creditable to both of them; and now and then Mr. Chadwick and Mr. Ashton would drop in together for half-an-hour’s chat, the gratitude of the former being deeper than the surface. But rarely did a feminine face save Cicily’s brighten up his solitude, and she, devoted to her young mistress, had always something to say about Augusta, if only what she wore or how she looked, which sent him off into dreamland immediately. Sunday was a very chequered day, when he missed his old friends most. True, he followed the family to church, perhaps carried Augusta’s prayer-book, exchanged a word of kindly greeting with old Mrs. Clowes, and Parson Brookes, who was not as hale as he had been; but there was no old Simon to grip his hand, no Bess to give him a motherly smile, and unless the weather was fine enough for a ramble in the fields with Nelson for companion, the rest of the day was very dull indeed.