“Hardly any, sir.”

“Sacrificed, no doubt, to her father’s objections. I remember them in your case. Yet⁠—your sister⁠—scarcely looks or speaks like an ignorant person.”

“Lizzie has as much thought as the best, Mr. Headstone. Too much, perhaps, without teaching. I used to call the fire at home, her books, for she was always full of fancies⁠—sometimes quite wise fancies, considering⁠—when she sat looking at it.”

“I don’t like that,” said Bradley Headstone.

His pupil was a little surprised by this striking in with so sudden and decided and emotional an objection, but took it as a proof of the master’s interest in himself. It emboldened him to say: