se of coming back to
the old thing, Guss?"

"Money, money, money!"

"Nothing more unfair was ever said to anyone. Have I given any signs of
selling myself for money? Have I been a fortune hunter? No one has ever
found me guilty of so much prudence. All I say is that having found out
the way to go to the devil myself, I won't take any young woman I like
with me there by marrying her. Heavens and earth! I can fancy myself
returned from a wedding tour with some charmer, like you, without a
shilling at my banker's, and beginning life at lodgings, somewhere down
at Chelsea. Have you no imagination? Can't you see what it would be?
Can't you fancy the stuffy sitting room with the horsehair chairs, and
the hashed mutton, and the cradle in the corner before long?"

"No I can't," said Guss.

"I can;--two cradles, and very little of the hashed mutton; and my lady
wife with no one to pin her dress for her but the maid of all work with
black fingers."

"It wouldn't be like that."

"It very soon would, if I were to marry a girl without a fortune. And I
know myself. I'm a very good fellow while the sun shines, but I
couldn't stand hardship. I shouldn't come home to the hashed mutton. I
should dine at the club, even though I had to borrow the money. I
should come to hate the cradle and its occupant, and the mother of its
occupant. I should take to drink, and should blow my brains out just as
the second cradle came. I can see it all as plain as a pikestaff. I
often lay awake the whole night and look at it. You and I, Guss, have
made a mistake from the beginning. Being poor people we have lived as
though we were rich."

"I have never done so."

"Oh yes, you have. Instead of dining out in Fitzroy Square and drinking
tea in Tavistock Place, you have gone to balls in Grosvenor Square and
been presented at Court."

"It wasn't my fault."

"It has been so, and therefore you should have made up your mind to
marry a rich man."

"Who was it asked me to love him?"

"Say that I did if you please. Upon my word I forget how it began, but
say that it was my fault. Of course it was my fault. Are you going to
blow me up for that? I see a girl, and first I like her, and then I
love her, and then I tell her so;--or else she finds it out without my
telling. Was that a sin you can't forgive?"

"I never said it was a sin."

"I don't mind being a worm, but I won't be trodden upon overmuch. Was
there ever a moment in which you thought that