"Terrible tearing fine I suppose you think your clothes are, young woman--terrible tearing fine; but I hate 'em, and they ill become a poor man's wife and a poor man's daughter. My mother wore her hair frapped back light and plain, with a forehead cloth, and a little blue baize rochet over her breast, and a blue apron and short gown and hob-nailed shoon; and she looked ten thousand times finer than ever you looked in your life--or ever can in that piebald flimsy, with those Godless smashed birds on your head. What care you for nature to put a bit of a dead creature 'pon top of your hair? A nasty fashion, and I'm sorry you follow it." She kept her temper well under this terrific onslaught. "We must follow the fashion, Mr. Baskerville. But I'll not wear this hat again afore you, since you don't like it." "Going to be married and live up to your knees in clover, eh? So you both think. Now tell me what you feel like to my son, please." "I love him dearly, I'm sure, and I think he's a very clever chap, and quite the gentleman in all his ways. Though he might dress a bit smarter, and not be so friendly with the other bellringers. Because they are commoner men than him, of course." "'Quite the gentleman'--eh? What's a gentleman?" "Oh, dear, Mr. Baskerville, you'll spoil my dinner with such a lot of questions. To be a gentleman is to be like Mark, I suppose--kind and quick to see what a girl wants; and to be handsome and be well thought of by everybody, and all the rest of it." "You go a bit too high at instep," he said. "You're too vain of your pretty face, and you answer rather pertly. You don't know what a gentleman is, for all you think yourself a fine lady. And I'll tell you this: very few people do know what a gentleman is. You can tell a lot about people by hearing them answer when you ask them what a gentleman is. Where would you like to live?" "Where 'twould please Mark best. And if the things I say offend you, I'm sorry for it. You must make allowances, Mr. Baskerville. I'm young, and I've not got much sense yet; but I want to please you--I want to please everybody, for that matter." This last remark much interested her listener. He started and looked at the girl fixedly. Then his expression changed, and he appeared to stare through her at somebody or something beyond. Behind Cora the old man did, indeed, see another very clearly in his mind's eye. After a painful silence she spoke again, and her tone was troubled. "I want to say the thing that will please you, if I can. But I must be myself. I'm sorry if you don't like me." "You must be yourself, and so must I," he answered; "and if I'm not liking you, you're loathing me. But we're getting through our dinner very nicely. Will you have any more of this cherry tart?" "No, I've done well." "You've eaten nought to name. I've spoiled your appetite, and you--well, you've done more than you think, and taught me more than you know yourself."