"Nor you for her?"
"Well;—Yes I do. She's one of my pet friends. There's nobody I like being with better."
"And if she were not married?"
"God knows what might have happened. I might have asked her to have me, because she has got money of her own. What's the use 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."