“Why are we so poor, George? Tell me that, brother mine. Why are we so poor?”
“There are hundreds as poor; thousands poorer.”
“Perhaps they don't care, don't fret about it, don't dwell on all the things they are debarred from, don't want this or that appliance to make life easier. Now look there! what a difference in one's existence to travel that way.”
As she spoke, she pointed to a travelling-carriage which swept over the bridge, with all the speed of four posters, and, with all the clatter of cracking whips and sounding horns, made for the inn of the village.
“How few travel with post now, in these days of railroad,” said he, not sorry to turn the conversation into another channel.
“I hope they are going on. I trust they 'll not stop here. We have been the great folk of the place up to this, but you 'll see how completely the courier or the femme de chambre will eclipse us now,” said she, rising. “Let us go back, or perhaps they 'll give our very rooms away.”
“How can you be so silly, Julia?”
“All because we are poor, George. Let me be rich, and you 'll be surprised, not only how generous I shall be, but how disposed to think well of every one. Poverty is the very mother of distrust.”
“I never heard you rail at our narrow fortune like this before.”
“Don't be angry with me, dear George, and I'll make a confession to you. I was not thinking of ourselves, nor of our humble lot all this while; it was a letter I got this morning from Nelly Bramleigh was running in my mind. It has never been out of my thoughts since I received it.”