Fancy living in the middle of factories, and factory people!
Though, of course, if your father leaves the Church, we shall not
be admitted into society anywhere. It will be such a disgrace to
us! Poor dear Sir John! It is well he is not alive to see what
your father has come to! Every day after dinner, when I was a
girl, living with your aunt Shaw, at Beresford Court, Sir John
used to give for the first toast--"Church and King, and down with
the Rump."'

Margaret was glad that her mother's thoughts were turned away
from the fact of her husband's silence to her on the point which
must have been so near his heart. Next to the serious vital
anxiety as to the nature of her father's doubts, this was the one
circumstance of the case that gave Margaret the most pain.

'You know, we have very little society here, mamma. The Gormans,
who are our nearest neighbours (to call society--and we hardly
ever see them), have been in trade just as much as these
Milton-Northern people.'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Hale, almost indignantly, 'but, at any rate, the
Gormans made carriages for half the gentry of the county, and
were brought into some kind of intercourse with them; but these
factory people, who on earth wears cotton that can afford linen?'

'Well, mamma, I give up the cotton-spinners; I am not standing up
for them, any more than for any other trades-people. Only we
shall have little enough to do with them.'

'Why on earth has your father fixed on Milton-Northern to live