Repaying him by an admiring and grateful smile, rather shed at his feet than lifted to his face, she would leave the mill reluctantly to go back to the cottage, and then, while she completed the exercise, or worked out the sum (for Mdlle. Moore taught her arithmetic too), she would wish nature had made her a boy instead of a girl, that she might ask Robert to let her be his clerk, and sit with him in the counting-house, instead of sitting with Hortense in the parlour.

Repaying him by an admiring and grateful smile, she would leave the mill reluctantly to go back to the cottage, wishing nature had made her a boy instead of a girl, so that she might be Robert's clerk, and sit with him in the counting-house.
