“I don’t see,” said Ford, aggrieved, “that we need call ourselves the lower classes; the middle—that is about what it is—the middle class—the strength of the country.”
“Bosh!” said Trevor, “she will go to Lady Randolph’s, and there she will see fine people, and no doubt she’ll be courted. There is nobody like them for knowing the value of money; and then she will come to you, Dick Ford, where she will see nobody, or else a few young clerks and that sort.”
“I assure you,” said Ford solemnly, “I will take care that she shall see no one here; not a man shall enter the house, not a creature come near her, while she is under my care.”
“That will be lively for Lucy,” said the old man, “you numskull! If she never sees any one, how is she to make a choice?”
“Mr. Trevor,” said Ford, with a voice so solemn and serious that it trembled, “you would not wish your heiress to make a choice among the young clerks? Whom you say,” he added after a moment, in a tone of offense, “she will meet here.”
“She is not my heiress, you stupid fellow. She is Lucilla’s heiress, poor Rainy’s heiress; what was he but a young clerk? Why shouldn’t she, if she likes, marry into her own class? That’s your snobbishness, Ford. You will find nothing of that in me. If she likes a man who is in the same rank of life as Rainy was when he began to make his fortune, or as I was (when I was that age), why let her marry him in Heaven’s name and be happy—that is,” said old Trevor, chuckling, “if she can get her guardians to consent.”
“Mr. Trevor,” said Ford hurriedly, with the tremulousness of real feeling, “I must protest, I must really protest. I am very conscious of the great kindness you are showing to us; but I can not sit quiet and see poor Lucy doomed to such a fate. She will never get all her guardians to consent. Put it into one person’s hands, whom you please, but for goodness’ sake don’t leave the poor thing to fight with half a dozen; the end will be that she will never be married at all.”
“And that won’t kill her,” said Trevor. “Do you think I want her to marry? Not a bit, not a bit. ‘She is better if she so abide.’ Don’t you know who said that? And I agree with St. Paul, whatever you may do.”
Now the idea of not agreeing with St. Paul was terrible to Ford; it scandalized him utterly; for he was a Low Churchman, and much devoted to the writer of the Epistles.
“There never could be any question on that point,” he said, “if you ask me whether I believe in my Bible, Mr. Trevor; but I can not pretend that I understand that passage. There is more in it, I make bold to say, than meets the eye. There’s a type in it, or a similitude. I am not a learned man, I can’t tell you what it is in the original, but there’s more in it than we think.”