By and by, Mr Openshaw came to lodge with them. He had started in life
as the errand-boy and sweeper-out of a warehouse; had struggled up
through all the grades of employment in it, fighting his way through
the hard, striving Manchester life with strong, pushing energy of
character. Every spare moment of time had been sternly given up to
self-teaching. He was a capital accountant, a good French and German
scholar, a keen, far-seeing tradesman--understanding markets and the
bearing of events, both near and distant, on trade; and yet, with such
vivid attention to present details, that I do not think he ever saw a
group of flowers in the fields without thinking whether their colour
would, or would not, form harmonious contrasts in the coming spring
muslins and prints. He went to debating societies, and threw himself
with all his heart and soul into politics; esteeming, it must
be owned, every man a fool or a knave who differed from him, and
overthrowing his opponents rather by the loud strength of his language
than the calm strength of his logic. There was something of the Yankee
in all this. Indeed, his theory ran parallel to the famous Yankee
motto--'England flogs creation, and Manchester flogs England.' Such
a man, as may be fancied, had had no time for falling in love, or
any such nonsense. At the age when most young men go through their
courting and matrimony, he had not the means of keeping a wife, and
was far too practical to think of having one. And now that he was
in easy circumstances, a rising man, he considered women almost as
encumbrances to the world, with whom a man had better have as little
to do as possible. His first impression of Alice was indistinct,
and he did not care enough about her to make it distinct. 'A pretty,
yea-nay kind of woman', would have been his description of her, if he
had been pushed into a corner. He was rather afraid, in the beginning,
that her quiet ways arose from a listlessness and laziness of