round to the back, when that fellow Earnshaw met me, took my bridle, and bid me go in by the front entrance. He patted Minny’s neck, and said she was a bonny beast, and appeared as if he wanted me to speak to him. I only told him to leave my horse alone, or else it would kick him. He answered in his vulgar accent, ‘It wouldn’t do mitch hurt if it did;’ and surveyed its legs with a smile. I was half inclined to make it try; however, he moved off to open the door, and, as he raised the latch, he looked up to the inscription above, and said, with a stupid mixture of awkwardness and elation: ‘Miss Catherine! I can read yon, now.’
“ ‘Wonderful,’ I exclaimed. ‘Pray let us hear you—you are grown clever!’
“He spelt, and drawled over by syllables, the name—‘Hareton Earnshaw.’
“ ‘And the figures?’ I cried, encouragingly, perceiving that he came to a dead halt.
“ ‘I cannot tell them yet,’ he answered.
“ ‘Oh, you dunce!’ I said, laughing heartily at his failure.
“The fool stared, with a grin hovering about his lips, and a scowl gathering over his eyes, as if uncertain whether he might not join in my mirth: whether it were not pleasant familiarity, or what it really was, contempt.
I settled his doubts, by suddenly retrieving my gravity and desiring him to walk away, for I came to see Linton, not him. He reddened—I saw that by the moonlight—dropped his hand from the latch, and skulked off, a picture of mortified vanity.
He imagined himself to be as accomplished as Linton, I suppose, because he could spell his own name; and was marvellously discomfited that I didn’t think the same.”