Page:Haworth's.djvu/197

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A REVOLUTION.
173

He pulled out a bank-note and handed it to her.

"Go to her to-morrow and give her that," he said. "Happen it'll be summat new fur her to get fifty at a stroke."

So it began to be understood that the master of "Haworth's" was a bugbear with redeeming points after all. The Broxton Bank had its weight too, and the new cottages which it was necessary to build.

"It is to Haworth after all that you owe the fact that the place is growing," said Ffrerich.

There came an evening, when on entering the drawing-room of a county potentate with whom she and her father were to dine, Rachel Ffrench found herself looking directly at Haworth, who stood in the center of a group of guests. They were talking to him with an air of great interest and listening to his off-hand replies with actual respect. Suddenly the tide had turned. Before the evening had passed the man was a lion, and all the more a lion because he had been so long tabooed. He went in to dinner with the lady patroness, and she afterward announced her intention of calling upon his mother in state.

"There is a rough candor about the man, my dear," she said, "which one must respect, and it appears that he has really reformed."

There was no difficulty after this. Mrs. Haworth had visitors every day, who came and examined her and wondered, and, somehow, were never displeased by her tender credulity. She admired them all and believed in them, and was always ready with tears and relief for their pensioners and charities.

"Don't thank me, ma'am," she would say. "Don't never thank me, for it's not me that deserves it, but him that's so ready and generous to every one that suffers.