"Well; poor! I hardly know what you call poor. But we all know that he is a distressed man. I suppose he has a good income, and a little ready money would, perhaps, set him up; but there's no doubt about his being over head and ears in debt, I suppose."
This seemed to throw a new and unexpected light on Miss Baker's mind. "I thought he was always so very respectable," said she.
"Hum-m-m!" said Miss Todd, who knew the world.
"Eh?" said Miss Baker, who did not.
"It depends on what one means by respectable," said Miss Todd.
"I really thought he was so very—"
"Hum-m-m-m," repeated Miss Todd, shaking her head.
And then there was a little conversation carried on between these ladies so entirely sotto voce that the reporter of this scene was unable to hear a word of it. But this he could see, that Miss Todd bore by far the greater part in it.
At the end of it, Miss Baker gave another, and a longer, and a deeper sigh. "But you know, my dear," said Miss Todd, in her most consolatory voice, and these words were distinctly audible, "nothing does a man of that sort so much good as marrying."
"Does it?" asked Miss Baker.