"My mother and sister are giving up three servants. Surely you can relinquish one."
"It is Scot in the stable, who gives up his helper. It is Jepson in the house, it is McNab in the kitchen. None of these three servants affect your mother's and sister's comfort in the least. Ducie is everything to David and myself. She keeps our rooms clean and comfortable, brings my breakfast, waits on me when I am sick, walks out with David when I am not able to do so, and in many other ways makes things more bearable. I beg you, Robert, not to send her away."
"Then the other three servants must also remain."
"You are not poor, you only feel poor because you spent so much on Christina."
"Who was a wicked failure, and mother says you were the prompter of her sinful conduct."
"Me! I had no more to do with her final choice than your mother had. I did not even know the name of the man she married."
"But you talked sentiment, poetry, honor, and such stuff to her."
"Never. She would not have understood me if I had."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say, Christina turned sentiment, poetry, honor, and such stuff, into laughter. She saw only one side of any person or thing—the comic side. If she could mimic you, she partly understood you; if she could not mimic you, then you were uninteresting and unknowable. But Christina was as kind to me as she could be to any one. She is gone, and I have no friend left here."