Sarahs School Friend | Page 3

wi', an'
it's not 'er fault either; it's only that she's so clever an' so beautiful.'
'She's good-looking, certainly; but, then, so are you. She's taken after
you, like me.' The young man smiled at his mother in a very pretty way.
He certainly had beautiful manners, as his mother said. 'But as for
being clever,' he continued, 'I call her a proud peacock.'
'Oh George, I was never as good-lookin' as Sairey, nor you either; nor
'alf such a lady. W'y, she might be a duchess's daughter! Every one says
so,' cried his mother, woman-like, dwelling upon the subject of good
looks rather than on her son's criticism of Sarah's cleverness.

'That's only education. You'd have been just as duchessy if you'd been
educated,' insisted her son, hesitating for a word to use instead of
lady-like, for he would not, even to himself, own that his mother was
not a lady in the world's acceptation of the word.
What every one in the West Riding, or heavy woollen district, said was,
what a most extraordinary thing it was that the son and daughter of that
brute Clay should be so refined when their father was such a rough,
uncouth man! The Clay family was one of the many instances in
Yorkshire of the mill-hand who rose from being a labourer to be the
owner of a large mill and enormous wealth, and who gave to his
children the education he had never received himself. But though in
most cases the children were better educated and superior in outward
seeming to their parents, it was not often that the contrast was so
marked. In this case it may have been caused by the fact that Mark Clay,
instead of marrying a mill-lass, had taken to wife a very pretty,
delicate-looking girl from London, who had bequeathed her good looks
to her two children. She, or rather her husband--for little Mrs Clay had
no voice in the matter--had sent the boy to Eton and then to Cambridge,
and the girl to what her mother called a ''igh-class, fashionable
school'--which, if high prices are any criterion, it certainly was.
Mrs Clay shook her head at her son's last remark. 'I should never 'ave
made a duchess. I was always timid, an' couldn't 'old up my 'ead as
Sairey does. It's somethin' in you both, though I don't 'old wi' Sairey
speakin' of 'er father in the way she does.'
'I should think not, indeed,' put in her son.
'Still, we can't expect 'er to respect us as much as she would if we 'ad
the same good manners an' way o' talkin' that she an' you 'ave. It's
natural she should feel superior, an' show it, too,' argued the poor
woman with some shrewdness; 'an' I've told your dad that it was only
w'at 'e might 'ave expected.'
'Pray, don't talk of Sarah's manners being good, nor her way of talking
either; they're both as bad as bad can be,' said George Clay, with his
soft drawl.

'W'y, you don't never mean to say that, George, an' after all the pounds
dad's paid for 'er? For goodness' sake, don't tell 'im, or 'e'll 'alf-kill
'er--'e would! You don't know your father as I do,' cried the mother in
consternation.
An expression of annoyance came over her son's face at these words.
'Don't make the pater out worse than he is, my dear mother. He may be
violent at times, but I hope he knows better than to use physical force.
Anyway, I shall not tell him anything of the sort, and when I say her
manners are bad and her language unlady-like'----
'But that's just w'at 'e thinks it isn't; an' though 'e gets angry, 'e thinks a
lot o' 'er. An' w'en I don't like the words she uses sometimes, 'e says I
don't know the way o' society; that the aristocracy speak like that, an'
be'ave so, too.'
'Well, so they do, some of them,' admitted her son.
But before he could finish his remark his mother interrupted him. 'Well,
then, that's w'at 'e wants; so if you tell 'im that, dear, 'e'll be in a good
temper for the rest o' the evenin'.' She looked wistfully at her son as she
made this suggestion.
He laughed good-humouredly. 'All right, mother; if Sarah gives him
some of her cheek to-night I'll tell him it's the fashion of the day. It's
true enough; but, oh dear! I wish you wouldn't have such fearfully long
dinners. That's not the fashion; it's the thing to starve.'
'It's not a bit o' good you tellin' 'im that, for 'e says 'e can afford a Lord
Mayor's banquet every day 'e likes, an' 'e 'll 'ave it, an' 'e can't abear to
see you sittin' there pickin'