“I am sure, out of the many, very many excellent offers, I have had made me,--excellent offers they were,--I might have done so over and over again; but I never intended to be married. I always liked to be my own mistress and my own master. Besides that, it does entail so much trouble on people in one way or another. Really, when I look on that great family of my brother Ted, I am fit to fancy it is pulling him down to the ground; and I positively believe it would, if he did not take advantage of his situation in trade, and rap and wring every farthing out of everybody in any way that he possibly can, without being at all particular;--though they are sweet children, they are! Ay, but something must be risked, and something must be sacrificed in this world. I mean to say, that when people do get married, they must make up their minds to strike the best balance between them mutually that they are able. That is my candid opinion of things; and, when I look upon them in that light--when I think about them in that manner, and say to myself, there is this on this side, and nothing on that side, which should I take? I lose my resolution,--I don't know; I feel that, by a person to whom I had no objection in any other shape, I might perhaps be superinduced to do as others have done, and to make a sacrifice, for the sake of spending our lives in that kind of domestic combination which binds people together more than anything else ever can. I am weak on that point, I know; but then, the home affections, as Mr. Longstaff says, constitute a very worthy and amiable weakness.” Miss Sowersoft uttered this last sentence in such a peculiar tone of self-satisfied depreciation, as evidently proved that she considered herself a much more eligible subject, on account of that identical weakness which she had verbally condemned, than she would have been if wholly free from it. “Well, meesis,” replied Mr. Palethorpe, with considerate deliberation, “I should have no objection to our union, if it so happened that we were not doing very well as we are at present; and, while we are making a little money to put by every week, I think it is as well just now to let good alone. I should like--”