“‘Show me your hands,’ said the man to me. I showed them. ‘You won’t do,’ said he.”
“I’m glad of it!” said Mary, again.
“No,” continued Richling; “or if I’d been a glazier, or a whitewasher, or a wood-sawyer, or”—he began to smile in a hard, unpleasant way,—“or if I’d been anything but an American gentleman. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t get the work!”
Mary sank into his lap, with her very best smile.
“John, if you hadn’t been an American gentleman”—
“We should never have met,” said John. “That’s true; that’s true.” They looked at each other, rejoicing in mutual ownership.
“But,” said John, “I needn’t have been the typical American gentleman,—completely unfitted for prosperity and totally unequipped for adversity.”
“That’s not your fault,” said Mary.
“No, not entirely; but it’s your calamity, Mary. O Mary! I little thought”—
She put her hand quickly upon his mouth. His eye flashed and he frowned.