"That is not the reason. The reason is because you do not try to rise in the world."
"It's no use trying."
"Have you ever tried?"
"Why, no! How can I try?"
"You wished just now that you were dead. Would it not be better to wish to live?"
"Not such a life as mine."
"But to wish to live would seem to imply that it must be a better life. And why need your life be so miserable? You gain fair wages; your wife earns money. Altogether I suppose you must have twenty-six or twenty-eight shillings a week——"
"But there's no thrift with it," exclaimed Cross. "It melts away somehow. Before the middle of the week comes, it's all gone."
"You spend some at the Horned Ram, you know," said William, not in a reproving tone.
"She squanders away in rubbish more than that," was Jacob's answer, pointing towards his house, and not giving at all a complimentary stress upon the "she."