From that time forward Mary's progress towards health was rapid.
There was every reason, but one, in favour of her speedy removal
home. All Jem's duties lay in Manchester. It was his mother's
dwelling-place, and there his plans for life had been to be worked
out; plans which the suspicion and imprisonment he had fallen into,
had thrown for a time into a chaos, which his presence was required
to arrange into form. For he might find, in spite of a jury's
verdict, that too strong a taint was on his character for him ever
to labour in Manchester again. He remembered the manner in which
some one suspected of having been a convict was shunned by masters
and men, when he had accidentally met with work in their foundry;
the recollection smote him now, how he himself had thought it did
not become an honest upright man to associate with one who had been
a prisoner. He could not choose but think on that poor humble
being, with his downcast conscious look; hunted out of the workshop,
where he had sought to earn an honest livelihood, by the looks, and
half-spoken words, and the black silence of repugnance (worse than
words to bear), that met him on all sides.
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