“It is time twice over he had set about something! You let him go on dawdling and dawdling without even making up his mind whether or not he ought to do anything! Take my word for it, Richard, you’ll have him on your hands till the day of your death!” The father did not reply that he could wish nothing better, that the threat was more than he could hope for. He did not want to provoke his sister-in-law, and he knew there was a shadow of reason in what she said, though even perfect reason could not have sweetened the mode in which she said it. Nothing could make up for the total absence of sympathy in her utterance of any modicum of truth she was capable of uttering. She was a very dusty woman, and never more dusty than when she fought against dust as in a warfare worthy of all a woman’s energies--one who, because she had not a spark of Mary in her, imagined herself a Martha. She was true as steel to the interests of those in whose life hers was involved, but only their dusty interests, not those which make man worth God’s trouble. She was a vessel of clay in an outhouse of the temple, and took on her the airs--not of gold, for gold has no airs--but the airs of clay imagining itself gold, and all the golden vessels nothing but clay. “I put it to you, Richard Colman,” she went on, “whether good ever came of reading poetry, and falling asleep under hay-stacks! He actually writes poetry!--and we all know what that leads to!” “Do we?” ventured her brother-in-law. “King David wrote poetry!” “Richard, don’t garble! I will not have you garble! You know what I mean as well as I do myself! And you know as well as I do what comes of writing poetry! That friend of Walter’s who borrowed ten pounds of you--did he ever pay you?” “He did, Ann.” “You didn’t tell _me_!” “I did not want to disappoint you!” replied Richard, with a sarcasm she did not feel. “It was worth telling!” she returned. “I did not think so. Everybody does not stick to a bank-note like a snail to the wall! I returned him the money.” “Returned him the money!” “Yes.” “Made him a present of _ten pounds_!” “Why not?” “Why then?” “I had more reasons than one.” “And no call to explain them! It was just like you to throw away your hard earnings upon a fellow that would never earn anything for himself! As if one such wasn’t enough to take all you’d got!” “How could he send back the money if that had been the case! He proved himself what I believed him, ready and willing to work! The money went for a fellow’s bread and cheese, and what better money’s worth would you have?” “You may some day want the bread and cheese for yourself!” “One stomach is as good as another!”