"And so poor Arthur has no money?" sighed out Miss Costigan, rather plaintively. "Poor lad, he was a good lad too: wild and talking nonsense, with his verses and pothry and that, but a brave, generous boy, and indeed I liked him—and he liked me too," she added, rather softly, and rubbing away at the shoe.
"Why don't you marry him if you like him so?" Mr. Bows said, rather savagely. "He is not more than ten years younger than you are. His mother may relent, and you might go and live and have enough at Fairoaks Park. Why not go and be a lady? I could go on with the fiddle, and the general live on his half-pay. Why don't you marry him? You know he likes you."
"There's others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no money and that's old enough," Miss Milly said sententiously.
"Yes, d—— it," said Bows with a bitter curse—"that are old enough and poor enough and fools enough for any thing."
"There's old fools and young fools too. You've often said so, you silly man," the imperious beauty said, with a conscious glance at the old gentleman. "If Pendennis has not enough money to live upon, it's folly to talk about marrying him; and that's the long and short of it."
"And the boy?" said Mr. Bows. "By Jove! you throw a man away like an old glove, Miss Costigan."
"I don't know what you mean, Bows," said Miss Fotheringay, placidly, rubbing the second shoe. "If he had had half of two thousand a year that papa gave him, or the half of that, I would marry him. But what is the good of taking on with a beggar? We're poor enough already. There's no use in my going to live with an old lady that's testy and cross, maybe, and would grudge me every morsel of meat. (Sure, it's near dinner time, and Suky not laid the cloth yet), and then," added Miss Costigan, quite simply, "suppose there was a family?—why, papa, we shouldn't be as well off as we are now."
"'Deed then, you would not Milly dear," answered the father.
"And there's an end to all the fine talk about Mrs. Arthur Pendennis of Fairoaks Park—the member of Parliament's lady," said Milly, with a laugh. "Pretty carriages and horses we should have to ride!—that you were always talking about, papa! But it's always the same. If a man looked at me, you fancied he was going to marry me; and if he had a good coat, you fancied he was as rich as Crazes."