that trifling coquetry with shirt-fronts, viz., the red crosses, which a
shrewd rival had very soon eclipsed by representing nymphs triangularly
posed, he devoted himself to his business from morning to night; as rigid
in demanding respect from those beneath him, as he was profuse in
lavishing it on his patrons. His public boast was, that he owed no man
a farthing; his secret comfort, that he possessed two thousand pounds in
the Funds. But Mr. Goren did not stop here. Behind these external
characteristics he nursed a passion. Evan was astonished and pleased to
find in him an enthusiastic fern-collector. Not that Mr. Harrington
shared the passion, but the sight of these brown roots spread out,
ticketed, on the stained paper, after supper, when the shutters were up
and the house defended from the hostile outer world; the old man poring
over them, and naming this and that spot where, during his solitary
Saturday afternoon and Sunday excursions, he had lighted on the rare
samples exhibited this contrast of the quiet evening with the sordid day
humanized Mr. Goren to him. He began to see a spirit in the rigid
tradesman not so utterly dissimilar to his own, and he fancied that he,
too, had a taste for ferns. Round Beckley how they abounded!

He told Mr. Goren so, and Mr. Goren said:

'Some day we'll jog down there together, as the saying goes.'

Mr. Goren spoke of it as an ordinary event, likely to happen in the days
to come: not as an incident the mere mention of which, as being probable,
stopped the breath and made the pulses leap.

For now Evan's education taught him to feel that he was at his lowest
degree. Never now could Rose stoop to him. He carried the shop on his
back. She saw the brand of it on his forehead. Well! and what was Rose