“Don’t press me—it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no more of it. I can not part with it—so there!”
“Now, look here, Marty,” said the barber, sitting down on the coffin-stool table. “How much do you get for making these spars?”
“Hush—father’s up-stairs awake, and he don’t know that I am doing his work.”
“Well, now tell me,” said the man, more softly. “How much do you get?”
“Eighteenpence a thousand,” she said, reluctantly.
“Who are you making them for?”
“Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here.”
“And how many can you make in a day?”
“In a day and half the night, three bundles—that’s a thousand and a half.”
“Two and threepence.” The barber paused. “Well, look here,” he continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present purse and the woman’s love of comeliness, “here’s a sovereign—a gold sovereign, almost new.” He held it out between his finger and thumb. “That’s as much as you’d earn in a week and a half at that rough man’s work, and it’s yours for just letting me snip off what you’ve got too much of.”