"God help her!" said Campbell, as he went downstairs.
"Misery breeds that temper, and only misery, in our people. I can show you as thorough gentlemen and ladies, people round Whitbury, living on ten shillings a week, as you will show me in Belgravia living on five thousand a year."
"I don't doubt it," said Campbell…. "So 'she couldn't go without he,' drunken dog as he is! Thus it is with them all the world over."
"So much the worse for them," said Tom cynically, "and for the men too. They make fools of us first with our over-fondness of them; and then they let us make fools of ourselves with their over-fondness of us."
"I fancy sometimes that they were all meant to be the mates of angels, and stooped to men as a pis aller; reversing the old story of the sons of heaven and the daughters of men."
"And accounting for the present degeneracy. When the sons of heaven married the daughters of men, their offspring were giants and men of renown. Now the sons of men marry the daughters of heaven, and the offspring is Wiggle, Waggle, Windbag, and Redtape."
They visited one public-house after another, till the girl found for them the man they wanted, a shabby, sodden-visaged fellow, with a would-be jaunty air of conscious shrewdness and vanity, who stood before the bar, his thumbs in his armholes, and laying down the law to a group of coster-boys, for want of a better audience.
The girl, after sundry plucks at his coat-tail, stopped him in the midst of his oration, and explained her errand somewhat fearfully.
Mr. Barker bent down his head on one side, to signify that he was absorbed in attention to her news; and then drawing himself up once more, lifted his greasy hat high in air, bowed to the very floor, and broke forth:—
"Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors:
A man of war, and eke a man of peace—
That is, if you come peaceful; and if not,
Have we not Hiren here?"