young man
to have to teach a young woman. Some women die in the learning.
Some won't learn it at all. Others do, and become dirty and rough
themselves. Now, you are very particular about women."

"I like to see them well turned out."

"What would you think of your own wife, nursing perhaps a couple of
babies, dressed nohow when she gets up in the morning, and going on
in the same way till night? That's the kind of life with officers who
marry on their pay. I don't say anything against it. If the man likes
it,--or rather if he's able to put up with it,--it may be all very
well; but you couldn't put up with it. Mary's very nice now, but
you'd come to be so sick of her, that you'd feel half like cutting
her throat,--or your own."

"It would be the latter for choice, sir."

"I dare say it would. But even that isn't a pleasant thing to look
forward to. I'll tell you the truth about it, my boy. When you first
came to me and told me that you were going to marry Mary Lowther, I
knew it could not be. It was no business of mine; but I knew it could
not be. Such engagements always get themselves broken off somehow.
Now and again there are a pair of fools who go through with it;--but
for the most part it's a matter of kissing and lovers' vows for a
week or two."

"You seem to know all about it, Uncle John."

"I haven't lived to be seventy without knowing something, I suppose.
And now here you are without a shilling. I dare say, if the truth
were known, you've a few debts here and there."

"I may owe three or four hundred pounds or so."

"As much as a year's income;--and you talk of marrying a girl without
a farthing."

"She has twelve hundred pounds."

"Just enough to pay your own debts, and take you out to India,--so
that you may start without a penny. Is that the sort of career that
will suit you, Walter? Can you trust yourself to that kind of thing,
with a wife under your arm? If you were a man of fortune, no doubt
Mary would make a very nice wife; but, as it is,--you must give it
up."

Whereupon Captain Marrable lit a pipe and took himself into the
parson's garden, thence into the stables and stable-yard, and again
back to the garden, thinking of all this. There was not a word spoken
by Parson John which Walter did not know to be true. He had already
come to the conclusion that he must go out to India before he
married. As for marrying Mary at once and taking her with him this
winter, that was impossible. He mus