n
ugly girl. I hate her. I hate all womenites. I wonder what they were
made for."

"Martin!" said his father, for Martin it was. The lad only answered by
turning his cynical young face, half-arch, half-truculent, towards the
paternal chair. "Martin, my lad, thou'rt a swaggering whelp now; thou
wilt some day be an outrageous puppy. But stick to those sentiments of
thine. See, I'll write down the words now i' my pocket-book." (The
senior took out a morocco-covered book, and deliberately wrote therein.)
"Ten years hence, Martin, if thou and I be both alive at that day, I'll
remind thee of that speech."

"I'll say the same then. I mean always to hate women. They're such
dolls; they do nothing but dress themselves finely, and go swimming
about to be admired. I'll never marry. I'll be a bachelor."

"Stick to it! stick to it!--Hesther" (addressing his wife), "I was like
him when I was his age--a regular misogamist; and, behold! by the time I
was three-and-twenty--being then a tourist in France and Italy, and the
Lord knows where--I curled my hair every night before I went to bed, and
wore a ring i' my ear, and would have worn one i' my nose if it had been
the fashion, and all that I might make myself pleasing and charming to
the ladies. Martin will do the like."

"Will I? Never! I've more sense. What a guy you were, father! As to
dressing, I make this vow: I'll never dress more finely than as you see
me at present.--Mr. Moore, I'm clad in blue cloth from top to toe, and
they laugh at me, and call me sailor at the grammar-school. I laugh
louder at them, and say they are all magpies and parrots, with their
coats one colour, and their waistcoats another, and their trousers a
third. I'll always wear blue cloth, and nothing but blue cloth. It is
beneath a human being's dignity to dress himself in parti-coloured
garments."

"Ten years hence, Martin, no tailor's shop will have choice of colours
varied enough for thy exacting taste; no perfumer's stores essences
exquisite enough for thy fastidious senses."

Martin looked disdain, but vouchsafed no further reply. Meantime Mark,
who for some minutes had been rummaging amongst a pile of books on a
side-table, took the word. He spoke in a peculiarly slow, quiet voice,
and with an expression of still irony in his face not easy to describe.

"Mr. Moore," said he, "you think perhaps it was a compliment on Miss
Caroline Helstone's part to say you were not sentimental. I thought you
a