‘Not a bit. In almost every case it is as is described, a delusion and a horrible disenchantment. It shall not be so with me, so I picture it in all its real features. If you do not understand me the fault lies with you. Even the blessed sun cannot illumine a room when the panes of the window are dull. I am a poor man, and a poor man must look at matters from what you are pleased to speak of as a sordid point of view. There are plants I have seen suspended in windows said to live on air. They are all pendulous. Now I am not disposed to become a drooping plant. Live on air I cannot. There is enough earth in my pot for my own roots, but for my own alone.’ ‘I see,’ said Barbara, laughing, but a little irritated. ‘You are ready enough to marry, but have not the means on which to marry.’ ‘Exactly,’ answered Mr. Coyshe. ‘I have a magnificent future before me, but I am like a man swimming, who sees the land but does not touch as much as would blacken his nails. Lord bless you!’ said Mr. Coyshe, ‘I support a wife on what I get at Beer Alston! Lord bless me!’ he stood up and sat down again, ‘you might as well expect a cock to lay eggs.’ Barbara bit her lips. ‘I should not have thought you so practical,’ she said. ‘I am forced to be so. It is the fate of poor men to have to count their coppers. Then there is another matter. If I were married, well, of course, it is possible that I might be the founder of a happy family. In the South Sea Islands the natives send their parents periodically up trees and then shake the trunks. If the old people hold on they are reprieved, if they fall they are eaten. We eat our parents in England also, and don’t wait till they are old and leathery. We begin with them when we are babes, and never leave off till nothing is left of them to devour. We feed on their energies, consume their substance, their time, their brains, their hearts piecemeal.’ ‘Well!’ ‘Well,’ repeated Mr. Coyshe, ‘if I am to be eaten I must have flesh on my bones for the coming Coyshes to eat.’ ‘You need not be alarmed as to the prospect,’ said Barbara gravely. ‘I have been left a few hundred pounds by my aunt, they bring in about fifty pounds a year. I will make it over to my sister.’ ‘You see for yourself,’ said Mr. Coyshe, ‘that Eve is not a young lady who can be made into a sort of housekeeper. She is too dainty for that. Turnips may be tossed about, but not apricots.’ ‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘I and my sister are quite different.’ ‘You will not repent of this determination?’ asked Mr. Coyshe. ‘I suppose it would not be asking you too much just to drop me a letter with the expression of your intention stated in it? I confess to a weakness for black and white. The memory is so treacherous, and I find it very like an adhesive chest plaster—it sticks only on that side which applies to self.’