Shirley

him to do?«
    »
I
find! You'll make me use language I'm not accustomed to use. I wish you would go home – here is the door – set off.«
    Moore sat down on one of the hall chairs.
    »You can't give him work in your mill – good – but you have land: find him some occupation on your land, Mr. Yorke.«
    »Bob, I thought you cared nothing about our ›lourdauds de paysans:‹ I don't understand this change.«
    »I do: the fellow spoke to me nothing but truth and sense. I answered him just as roughly as I did the rest, who jabbered mere gibberish. I couldn't make distinctions there and then: his appearance told what he had gone through lately clearer than his words: but where is the use of explaining? Let him have work.«
    »Let him have it yourself. If you are so very much in earnest, strain a point.«
    »If there was a point left in my affairs to strain, I would strain it till it cracked again; but I received letters this morning which show me pretty nearly where I stand, and it is not far off the end of the plank. My foreign market, at any rate, is gorged. If there is no change – if there dawns no prospect of peace – if the Orders in Council are not, at least, suspended, so as to open our way in the West – I do not know where I am to turn. I see no more light than if I were sealed in a rock; so that for me to pretend to offer a man a livelihood would be to do a dishonest thing.«
    »Come, let us take a turn on the front: it is a starlight night,« said Mr. Yorke.
    They passed out, closing the front-door after them, and, side by side, paced the frost-white pavement to and fro.
    »Settle about Farren at once,« urged Mr. Moore. »You have large fruit-gardens at Yorke Mills: he is a good gardener: give him work there.«
    »Well, so be it. I'll send for him to-morrow, and we'll see. And now, my lad, you're concerned about the condition of your affairs?«
    »Yes: a second failure – which I may delay, but which, at this moment, I see no way finally to avert – would blight the name of Moore completely; and you are aware I had fine intentions of paying off every debt, and re-establishing the old firm on its former basis.«
    »You want capital – that's all you want.«
    »Yes; but you might as well say that breath is all a dead man wants to live.«
    »I know – I know capital is not to be had for the asking; and if you were a married man, and had a family, like me, I should think your case pretty nigh desperate; but the young and unencumbered have chances peculiar to themselves. I hear gossip now and then about your being on the eve of marriage with this miss and that; but I suppose it is none of it true?«
    »You may well suppose that: I think I am not in a position to be dreaming of marriage. Marriage! I cannot bear the word: it sounds so silly and utopian. I have settled it decidedly that marriage and love are superfluities, intended only for the rich, who live at ease, and have no need to take thought for the morrow; or desperations, the last and reckless joy of the deeply wretched, who never hope to rise out of the slough of their utter poverty.«
    »I should not think so if I were circumstanced as you are: I should think I could very likely get a wife with a few thousands, who would suit both me and my affairs.«
    »I wonder where?«
    »Would you try, if you had a chance?«
    »I don't know: it depends on – in short, it depends on many things.«
    »Would you take an old woman?«
    »I'd rather break stones on the road.«
    »So would I. Would you take an ugly one?«
    »Bah! I hate ugliness and delight in beauty: my eyes and heart, Yorke, take pleasure in a sweet, young, fair face, as they are repelled by a grim, rugged, meagre one: soft delicate lines and hues please – harsh ones prejudice me. I won't have an ugly wife.«
    »Not if she were rich?«
    »Not if she were dressed in gems. I could not love – I could not fancy – I could not endure her. My taste must have satisfaction, or disgust would break out in despotism – or worse – freeze to utter iciness.«
    »What, Bob, if you married an honest, good-natured, and wealthy lass, though a little hard-favoured, couldn't you put up with the high cheek-bones, the rather wide mouth, and reddish hair?«
    »I'll never try, I tell you. Grace at least I
will
have, and youth and symmetry – yes, and what I call beauty.«
    »And poverty, and a nursery full of bairns you can neither clothe nor feed, and very soon an anxious faded mother – and then