ve 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 bankruptcy,
discredit--a life-long struggle."

"Let me alone, Yorke."

"If you are romantic, Robert, and especially if you are already in love,
it is of no use talking."

"I am not romantic. I am stripped of romance as bare as the white
tenters in that field are of cloth."

"Always use such figures of speech, lad; I can understand them. And
there is no love affair to disturb your judgment?"

"I thought I had said enough on that subject before. Love for me?
Stuff!"

"Well, then, if you are sound both in heart and head, there is no
reason why you should not profit by a good chance if it offers;
therefore, wait and see."

"You are quite oracular, Yorke."

"I think I am a bit i' that line. I promise ye naught and I advise ye
naught; but I bid ye keep your heart up, and be guided by
circumstances."

"My namesake the physician's almanac could not speak more guardedly."

"In the meantime, I care naught about ye, Robert Moore: ye are nothing
akin to me or mine, and whether ye lose or find a fortune it maks no
difference to me. Go home, now. It has stricken ten. Miss Hortense will
be wondering where ye are."

CHAPTER X.

OLD MAIDS.

Time wore on, and spring matured. The surface of England began to look
pleasant: her fields grew green, her hills fresh, her gardens blooming;
but at heart she was no better. Still her poor were wretched, still
their employers were harassed. Commerce, in some of its branches, seemed
threatened with paralysis, for the war continued; England's blood was
shed and her wealth lavished--all, it seemed, to attain most inadequate
ends. Some tidings there were indeed occasionally of successes in the
Peninsula, but these came in slowly; long intervals occurred between, in
which no note was heard but the insolent self-felicitations of Bonaparte
on his continued triumphs. Those who suffered from the results of the
war felt this tedious, and, as they thought, hopeless