ind a home if you require one."

"Yes; and sell myself! I'll tell you what it is, George Robinson; I
wish to enter no man's home unless I can earn my meat there by my
work. No man shall tell me that I am eating his bread for nothing. As
for love, I don't believe in it. It's all very well for them as have
nothing to do and nothing to think of,--for young ladies who get up
at ten in the morning, and ride about with young gentlemen, and spend
half their time before their looking-glasses. It's like those poetry
books you're so fond of. But it's not meant for them as must earn
their bread by their own sweat. You talk about love, but it's only
madness for the like of you."

"I shall talk about it no more."

"You can't afford it, George; nor yet can't I. What a man wants in a
wife is some one to see to his cooking and his clothes; and what a
woman wants is a man who can put a house over her head. Of course, if
she have something of her own, she'll have so much the better house.
As for me, I've got nothing now."

"That would have made no difference with me." Robinson knew that he
was wrong to say this, but he could not help it. He knew that he
would be a madman if he again gave way to any feeling of tenderness
for this girl, who could be so hard in her manner, so harsh in her
speech, and whose temperament was so utterly unsuited to his own. But
as she was hard and harsh, so was he in all respects the reverse. As
she had told him over and over again, he was tender-hearted even to
softness.

"No; it wouldn't," she replied. "And, therefore, with all your
cleverness, you are little better than a fool. You have been working
hard and living poor these two years back, and what better are you?
When that old man was weak enough to give you the last of his money,
you didn't keep a penny."

"Not a penny," said Robinson, with some feeling of pride at his
heart.

"And what the better are you for that? Look at them Joneses; they
have got money. When the crash comes, they won't have to walk out
into the street. They'll start somewhere in a little way, and will do
very well."

"And would you have had me become a thief?"

"A thief! You needn't have been a thief. You needn't have taken it
out of the drawers as some of them did. I couldn't do that myself.
I've been sore tempted, but I could never bring myself to that." Then
she got up, and went to her father, and Robinson returned again to
the figures that were before him.

"What a