“Nor I, but you work with your body and I with my brain. That’s why we stock our larders with different fare. There’s mine yonder.” He tilted his head toward the crowded bookcases.
“Lot o’ nonsense! Ole books!”
“Don’t despise them, please.”
“I don’t; but a book’s a thing for after dinner, not to make yer dinner off of, like you do. Wonder is you ’aven’t more pride in yerself.”
“Pride?” He was quite startled.
“A young feller like wot you are lettin’ ’imself go to pieces like the lilies in the field, or whatever the sayin’ is. ’Ow d’you s’pose you’ll ever take the fancy of a young woman lookin’ like you do? You wouldn’t never do it.”
Wynne smiled. “Is it only the dressed ox which can go to the altar?” he asked.
“I donno nothin’ ’bout dressed oxes, but I do know as any young woman of spirit looks for a man with a bit of blood in ’im. After all, nature’s nature, y’know, with Christian or ’eathen alike, and there’s no gettin’ away from it.”
“You should write a treatise on Eugenics,” said Wynne, and escaped to the solitude of his bedroom.