"Well," said Mrs. Prime, looking down demurely upon the ground, for Mr. Prong had not at once gone on to say what were his ideas about money.
"And as regards money,—need I hardly declare that my motives are pure and disinterested? I am aware that in worldly affairs you are at present better off than I am. My professional income from the pew-rents is about a hundred and thirty pounds a year."—It must be admitted that it was very hard work. By this time Mr. Prong had withdrawn his hand from the table, finding that attempt to be hopeless, and had re-settled his chair upon its four feet. He had commenced by requesting Mrs. Prime to hear him patiently, but he had probably not calculated that she would have listened with a patience so cruel and unrelenting. She did not even speak a word when he communicated to her the amount of his income. "That is what I receive here," he continued, "and you are probably aware that I have no private means of my own."
"I didn't know," said Mrs. Prime.
"No; none. But what then?"
"Oh, dear no."
"Money is but dross. Who feels that more strongly than you do?"
Mr. Prong in all that he was saying intended to be honest, and in asserting that money was dross, he believed that he spoke his true mind. He thought also that he was passing a just eulogium on Mrs. Prime, in declaring that she was of the same opinion. But he was not quite correct in this, either as regarded himself, or as regarded her. He did not covet money, but he valued it very highly; and as for Mrs. Prime, she had an almost unbounded satisfaction in her own independence. She had, after all, but two hundred a year, out of which she gave very much in charity. But this giving in charity was her luxury. Fine raiment and dainty food tempted her not at all; but nevertheless she was not free from temptations, and did not perhaps always resist them. To be mistress of her money, and to superintend the gifts, not only of herself but of others; to be great among the poor, and esteemed as a personage in her district,—that was her ambition. When Mr. Prong told her that money in her sight was dross, she merely shook her head. Why was it that she wrote those terribly caustic notes to the agent in Exeter if her quarterly payments were ever late by a single week? "Defend me from a lone widow," the agent used to say, "and especially if she's evangelical." Mrs. Prime delighted in the sight of the bit of paper which conveyed to her the possession of her periodical wealth. To her money certainly was not dross, and I doubt if it was truly so regarded by Mr. Prong himself.
"Any arrangements that you choose as to settlements or the like of that, could of course be made." Mr. Prong when he began, or rather when he made up his mind to begin, had determined that he would use all his best power of language in pressing his suit; but the work had been so hard that his fine language had got itself lost in the struggle. I doubt whether this made much difference with Mrs. Prime; or it may be, that he had sustained the propriety of his words as long as such propriety was needful and salutary to his purpose. Had he spoken of the "like of that" at the opening of the negotiation, he might have shocked his hearer; but now she was too deeply engaged in solid serious considerations to care much for the words which were used. "A hundred and thirty from pew-rents," she said to herself, as he endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to look under her bonnet into her face.
"I think I have said it all now," he continued. "If you will trust yourself into my keeping I will endeavour, with God's assistance, to do my duty by you. I have said but little personally of myself or of my feelings, hoping that it might be unnecessary."
"Oh, quite so," said she.