"Curse him!" muttered Gurdon, as he left the room; "a purse-proud, haughty brute! looks upon a servant as if he were a dog. I know him, though--read him like a book--turn him inside out like a glove. Waited on him, served him as I have all these years, and yet, because a man can't help giving way just a trifle to his weakness, he's to be threatened always with the sack. He won't send me away, though, not he--he knows better. Read him like a book I can, and he knows it too. Pride must have a fall, and he's full of it--running over with it. Just as if one man wasn't as good as another. Discharge me, will he? Perhaps I'll discharge myself before he has the chance. Sitting and sulking there in his old library, day after day. I haven't forgotten the old affair. I ain't blind, and I'll tell him so as soon as I look at him. Here, hi! Jane!" Mr Gurdon's legs had conveyed him, as he went on muttering, as far as the housekeeper's room, when, seeing the flutter of a garment just turning a corner at the end of the passage, he called out, and Jane Barker, rather red of eye, turned round and confronted him. "Here, come in here, Jenny, I want to talk to you," he said, catching her by the hand, when, without a word, she followed him into the housekeeper's room, and he closed the door. "I knew he hadn't," said Jane, who had been watching him from a distance, and had seen him enter and leave the library, "you wouldn't have looked cross like that, John, if he had." "He don't dare!" said Gurdon, insolently. "It's all smoke, and he knows now that I'm not blind. Discharge me, indeed! I'll discharge myself, and have something for holding my tongue into the bargain! Don't tell me: I can read him like a book, and his pride will humble itself before me like a schoolboy's. Now, look here, Jenny: there's been enough nonsense now. We've been courting years enough, and you've saved up a bit of money. Let's go at once. I've saved nothing; but I've had my eyes open, and if I don't leave the Castle a hundred pounds in pocket it's a strange thing to me. I'm sick of it, I am; and I know of a decent public-house to let over at Blankesley, where the iron-pits are. There'll be no end of trade to it, so let's get married and take it. Now, what do you say?"