Ellen had only to hold her tongue for them be able to hear his loud
tones telling Mrs. King that the glass was falling, and his hay in
capital order, and his hands short, and asking whether her boy Harold
would come and help in the hay-field between the post times. Mrs.
King gave a ready answer that the boy would be well pleased, and the
farmer promised him his victuals and sixpence for the day. 'Your
lass wouldn't like to come too, I suppose, eh?'

Ellen flushed with indignation. She go a hay-making! Her mother was
civilly making answer that her daughter was engaged with her sick
brother, and besides--had her work for Mrs. Price, which must be
finished off. The farmer, saying he had not much expected her, but
thought she might like a change from moping over her needle, went
off.

Ellen did not feel ready to forgive him for wanting to set her to
field-work. There is some difference between being fine and being
refined, and in Ellen's station of life it is very difficult to hit
the right point. To be refined is to be free from all that is rough,
coarse, or ungentle; to be fine, is to affect to be above such
things. Now Ellen was really refined in her quietness and maidenly
modesty, and there was no need for her to undertake any of those
kinds of tasks which, by removing young girls from home shelter, do
sometimes help to make them rude and indecorous; but she was FINE,
when she gave herself a little mincing air of contempt, as if she
despised the work and those who did it. Lydia Grant, who worked so
steadily and kept to herself so modestly, that no one ventured a bold
word to her as she tossed her hay, was just as refined as Ellen King
behind her white blinds, ay, or as Jane Selby herself in her terraced
garden. Refinement is in the mind that loves whatsoever is pure,