“And are worked off their feet, they and all their belongings, their wives made drudges of, regular parish women, Bible women, or whatever you call them. I know what goes on in large parishes, in great towns. And the children grow up on the streets. No, the country’s bad enough, but at least they can get fresh air and milk in the country, and people may be kind to them: and there’s always a schoolmaster or someone to give them a little education.” “Mr. Prescott,” said the curate mildly, “the children you are so kindly anxious about are not born yet, and perhaps never will be. Don’t let us go any farther than is necessary. The question in the meantime concerns only Mary and myself.” “And how long will that be the case?” cried the Squire. But presently he calmed down. “You might get food perhaps,” he said. “I say perhaps--I don’t see how you are to do it--but allow that you could get food out of it, and a cottage to live in--where are your clothes to come from? Where are your shoes to come from? Mary is a lady; she has been brought up to have servants to wait upon her. Is my niece to be your housemaid, Mr. Asquith? your cook, and your washerwoman, and everything? You should marry somebody that is used to that sort of thing. Somebody who has the strength for it. Somebody in your own class of life!” The curate rose up with a flush of anger on his face. He could keep his temper, but yet it stung him, all the more that it was just enough, and he had already said all this to himself. He said, “I fear it will do no good to talk of it longer, Mr. Prescott--you drive me to despair. And I don’t deny that it is all true, everything you say. But I shall not always be curate at Horton. I shall not always continue a curate even, I hope. Sometimes, even without much influence, if a man does his work well, promotion comes.” “Very seldom,” said the Squire. “Still it comes sometimes: and if ever man had an inducement to work--will you think it over and try to look upon it more favourably? I know what a sacrifice it must be for her. Still, she has a right to choose too.” “To choose--at her age--knowing nothing of the world! Whatever you felt, sir, you should have kept it to yourself--you should not have spoken. How is a girl to know?” “I thought so too,” said the poor curate, humbly. “But a man has not always command of himself.”