‘I don’t think it has done you much harm,’ said Mary, whose natural impulse was to defend the ancient authorities, however much she might sympathise with the sufferers in her heart. ‘Don’t you?’ said Ben, walking away from the breakfast-table to the window, where he stood drawing up and down the blind with preoccupied looks. After a few minutes she, too, moved and went up to him. Her mind was full of anxiety to say something,--to give him to understand that she could enter into his feelings; but it was so difficult to enter upon such a subject with a man, and especially with such a man as Ben. ‘Ben, I think I know,--a little,--what you mean,’ she said, faltering; ‘and I can see how, in some things, it must have been very hard,--preventing you from,--often,--doing what you wished; but now that is over. You need not wait now----’ He turned round and looked at her with some surprise in his eyes. ‘You don’t know what you are saying, Mary,’ he said. ‘I am like most men, very glad now to have been prevented doing things which at one time I would fain have done. And you are right, too,--I am my own master now,--not because the will is to be read this day week, but because I have found a trade and can work at it;--but that was not what I meant.’ Mary sat down patiently and raised her eyes to him that he might tell her what he did mean. She was in the way of listening to a great many explanations, and thought them natural. Ben, for his part, stood and looked at her for a minute, and then turned away with a laugh. ‘Poor Mary!’ he said. ‘What wearisome talk you must have listened to all these years,--going into everything! You must have a special faculty for that sort of thing, you women; how have you managed to live through it all and keep your youth and your bloom?’ ‘There has been nothing dreadful to live through,’ said Mary; ‘but as for the youth, I don’t pretend to that any longer. It is gone, like so many other pretty things; and I am not thinking of myself.’ ‘Not now, nor ever,’ said her cousin; ‘but I don’t feel disposed to give up the matter as you do. I don’t feel very aged----’ ‘But you are a man,’ said Mary, interrupting him, ‘which makes all the difference; and, besides, this sort of talk is quite nonsense. I must go and read the paper with godmamma. Have you done with it?’ And she took the “Times” from the table, and was about to leave the room. ‘I have not done with it,’ said Ben, ‘I have not begun it even. I am going to read it to my mother, and you shall come and listen, if you like. You have done our duty long enough. It is but fair I should take my spell now.’