Richard was not entirely at his ease in listening. He tried to smile, but failed to smile naturally.
‘I don’t see what you found wrong,’ he returned, abruptly.
‘Why, I’m a-tellin’ you, my boy, I didn’t find nothing wrong except in myself, as you may say. What’s the good o’ beatin’ about the bush? It’s just this ‘ere, Dick, my lad. When I come to the Square, you know very well who it was as I come to see. Well, it stands to reason as I can’t go to the new ‘ouse with the same thoughts as I did to the old. Mind, I can’t say as she’d ever a’ listened to me; it’s more than likely she wouldn’t But now that’s all over, and the sooner I forget all about it the better for me. And th’ only way to forget is to keep myself to myself,—see, Dick?’
The listener drummed with his fingers on the table, still endeavouring to smile.
‘I’ve thought about all this, Dan,’ he said at length, with an air of extreme frankness. ‘In fact, I meant to have a talk with you. Of course I can’t speak for my sister, and I don’t know that I can even speak to her about it, but one thing I can say, and that is that she’ll never be encouraged by me to think herself better than her old friends.’ He gave a laugh. ‘Why, that ‘ud be a good joke for a man in my position! What am I working for, if not to do away with distinctions between capital and labour? You’ll never have my advice to keep away, Do you suppose I shall cry off with Emma Vine just because I’ve and that you know. Why, who am I going to marry myself? got more money than I used to have?’
Daniel’s eye was upon him as he said these words, an eye at once reflective and scrutinising. Richard felt it, and laughed yet more scornfully.
‘I think we know you better than that,’ responded Dabbs. ‘But it ain’t quite the same thing, you see. There’s many a man high up has married a poor girl. I don’t know how it is; perhaps because women is softer than men, and takes the polish easier. And then we know very well how it looks when a man as has no money goes after a girl as has a lot. No, no; it won’t do, Dick.’
It was said with the voice of a man who emphasises a negative in the hope of eliciting a stronger argument on the other side. But Richard allowed the negative finality in fact, if not in appearance.
‘Well, it’s for your own deciding, Dan. All I have to say is that you don’t stay away with my approval. Understand that.’
He left Daniel idly stirring the dregs of his liquor, and went off to pay another visit. This was to the familiar house in Wilton Square. There was a notice in the window that dress-making and millinery were carried on within.