It was a bitter disappointment to give up the girl; for, beside the great work, he loved her in an uncouth fashion, and hated Holmes.

He met her alone in the morning; but when he saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how she glanced timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented.
Something in the wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream of his boyhood; for he sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to.
All he said was, that "women will be women, and that she had a worse job on her hands than the House of Refuge,"-- which she put down to the account of his ill-temper, and only laughed, and made him shake hands.
Lois and her father came out in the old cart in high state across the bleak, snowy hills, quite aglow with all they had seen at the farm-houses on the road.

Margret had arranged a settle for the sick girl by the kitchen-fire, but they all came out to speak to her.
As for the dinner, it was the essence of all Christmas dinners: Dickens himself, the priest of the genial day, would have been contented.

The old school-master and his wife had hearts big and warm enough to do the perpetual honours of a baronial castle; so you may know how the little room and the faces about the homely table glowed and brightened.

Even Knowles began to think that Holmes might not be so bad, after all, recalling the chicken in the mill, and,--"Well, it was better to think well of all men, poor devils!" I am sorry to say there was a short thunderstorm in the very midst of the dinner.