“He has been toiling hard many a year for it, Dinah, don't forget that.” “I believe you want to drive me mad, Peter. You know these are things that I can't bear, and that's the reason you say them. Toil, indeed! _I_ never saw him do anything except sit on a gate at the Lock Meadows, with a pipe in his mouth; and if you asked him what he was there for, it was a 'track' he was watching, a 'dog-fox that went by every afternoon to the turnip field.' Very great toil that was!” “There was n't an earth-stopper like him in the three next counties; and if I was to have a pack of foxhounds tomorrow--” “You 'd just be as great a foot as ever you were, and the more sorry I am to hear it; but you 're not going to be tempted, Peter Barrington. It's not foxes we have to think of, but where we 're to find shelter for ourselves.” “Do you know of anything we could turn to, more profitable, Dinah?” asked he, mildly. “There 's nothing could be much less so, I know _that!_ You are not very observant, Peter, but even to you it must have become apparent that great changes have come over the world in a few years. The persons who formerly indulged their leisure were all men of rank and fortune. Who are the people who come over here now to amuse themselves? Staleybridge and Manchester creatures, with factory morals and bagman manners; treating our house like a commercial inn, and actually disputing the bill and asking for items. Yes, Peter, I overheard a fellow telling Darby last week that the ''ouse was dearer than the Halbion!'” “Travellers will do these things, Dinah.” “And if they do, they shall be shown the door for it, as sure as my name is Dinah Barrington.” “Let us give up the inn altogether, then,” said he, with a sudden impatience. “The very thing I was going to propose, Peter,” said she, solemnly. “What!--how?” cried he, for the acceptance of what only escaped him in a moment of anger overwhelmed and stunned him. “How are we to live, Dinah?” “Better without than with it,--there's my answer to that. Let us look the matter fairly in the face, Peter,” said she, with a calm and measured utterance. “This dealing with the world 'on honor' must ever be a losing game. To screen ourselves from the vulgar necessities of our condition, we must submit to any terms. So long as our intercourse with life gave us none but gentlemen to deal with, we escaped well and safely. That race would seem to have thinned off of late, however; or, what comes to the same, there is such a deluge of spurious coin one never knows what is real gold.” “You may be right, Dinah; you may be right.” “I know I am right; the experience has been the growth of years too. All our efforts to escape the odious contact of these people have multiplied our expenses. Where one man used to suffice, we keep three. You yourself, who felt it no indignity to go out a-fishing formerly with a chance traveller, have to own with what reserve and caution you would accept such companionship now.”