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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
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