"I should say handsome," I rejoined. "I understood from Mr. Pye that she is French."
"I think I heard so," said Pye, "but you could tell."
"Well, she spoke French," I said with a smile.
Pye's smile seemed to commend my reticence, but Holgate, ignoring the obvious retort on me, pursued a different subject.
"Upon my soul, I envy people like those millionaires. Here am I working like a navvy for a bare living, never been able to marry; Pye probably in the same case; and you, doctor?"
"No; I'm a bachelor," I answered.
"Well, take us three—no doubt in our different walks every bit as capable as Mr. Morland on his Wall Street, or wherever it is. It isn't a righteous distribution of this world's goods."
"It is odd," said I, speaking my thoughts, "how you came to take up this life."
"The sort of blunder," said Holgate, "that is made in three cases out of four. I hankered after it in my teens, and once out of them it was too late. Who is going to adapt a youth of twenty-one, without capital, to a commercial life, or a legal life, or a medical life? There is no changing the dice. When the hands are dealt you must abide by them."
"Yes, we are all waifs," said I sententiously, not being greatly interested in the argument.