One evening, after having finished his task of digging (for digging was
now become a task), he was going to take a walk to Duddingstone lake,
when Colin, who was at the same instant setting out for the Links,
roughly insisted upon Forester's accompanying him. Our hero, who was
never much disposed to yield to the taste of others, positively refused
the gardener's son, with some imprudent expressions of contempt. From
this moment Colin became his enemy, and, by a thousand malicious devices,
contrived to show his vulgar hatred.

Forester now, to his great surprise, discovered that hatred could exist
in a cottage. Female vanity, he likewise presently perceived, was not
confined to the precincts of a ball-room; he found that Miss M'Evoy spent
every leisure moment in the contemplation of her own coarse image in a
fractured looking-glass. He once ventured to express his dislike of a
many-coloured plaid in which Miss M'Evoy had arrayed herself _for a
dance_; and the fury of her looks, and the loud-toned vulgarity of her
conceit, were strongly contrasted with the recollection of Flora
Campbell's gentle manners and sweetness of temper. The painted flower-pot
was present to his imagination, and he turned from the lady who stood
before him with an air of disgust, which he had neither the wish nor the
power to conceal. The consequences of offending this high-spirited damsel
our hero had not sufficiently considered: the brother and sister, who
seldom agreed in any thing else, now agreed, though from different
motives, in an eager desire to torment Forester. Whenever he entered the
cottage, either to rest himself, or to partake of those "savoury messes,
which the _neat-handed_ Phillis dresses," he was received with sullen
silence, or with taunting reproach. The old gardener, stupid as he was,
Forester thought an agreeable companion, compared with his insolent son
and his vixen daughter. The happiest hours of the day, to our hero, were