Mrs. Howell, who had not been very prepossessed herself, felt it her duty to remonstrate with him for judging hastily.
"The gentry always has such airs," she said; "I daresay the old lady means well enough. But I must say I did take to the girl."
"And she to you, apparently." And her husband repeated what Monica had said about coming again.
"Bless her!" ejaculated warm-hearted Mrs. Howell; and then she added wistfully, "I wish, Bob----"
"What, old girl?"
"That our Lily was a bit more like her."
"Tut, tut!" he said. "This Miss Beauchamp is a lady, born and bred; and our girl ain't got a drop of blue blood in her veins."
"Our Lily don't seem to have got no heart, somehow," sighed her mother. "She's all for clothes, an' pleasure, an' pleasin' herself."
"It's the brass that's to blame for that," said the man who had amassed a fortune of over a quarter of a million. "I'm almost sorry I had such a streak of luck. We were happier in the old days, Caroline, when we lived in the little house at Bermondsey, and went out marketing together Saturday nights, guess the old proverb that 'money's the root of all evil' is about right. It's all very well, but it don't buy happiness."
"That ain't a proverb, Bob," said his wife, reprovingly, "it's in the Bible, and it says it's the love of money that makes all the mischief. I sometimes think, Bob," she added, a trifle hesitatingly, for she was treading on tender ground, "that if we were a bit religious, we should be happier like."