"Not with myself specially; but I'm very well pleased with my class, and the older I grow the better I think of it."
"People be like yonder pool—scum at the top and dirt at the bottom," declared Humphrey. "The sweet water is in the middle; and the useful part of the people be the middle part."
"In a way, yes. We of the lower middle-class are the backbone: the nation has to depend on us; but I'm not for saying the swells haven't their uses. Only they'd be nought without us."
"It takes all sorts to make a world. But leave that. I ban't up here to talk politics. What does doctor say about your throat?"
"Leave that too. I'm not here to talk about my health. I want to forget it for a few hours. The wedding is on my mind just now. Mrs. Lintern and her daughter intend it to be a bit out of the common; and so do I. But the bride's mother's set on it taking place at our chapel, and Hester wants it to be at church. Ned don't care a rush, of course."
"It ought to be at church."
"Don't see any pressing reason. Toss up, I say."
"You should know better than to talk like that. You Dissenters——"
"No arguments, Humphrey. But all the same they must be married in church or chapel, and since there's such a division of opinion—I'm anxious to see Ned married. 'Tis more than time and certainly no fault of his that they didn't join sooner. But Cora had her own ideas and——"
"Oblige me by not naming either of them. You can't expect me to be interested. Even if they were different from what they are, I should remember the cruel past too keenly to feel anything good towards either of them."