“Oh, Curling’s a gentleman,” said my uncle, “and so is Spratling, though his name might be grander.” “Mr. Curling is gentlemanly, I admit, but I don’t consider him to be a gentleman,” exclaimed my aunt. Conny picked at a bit of bread and twisted the fragments into little balls. “Oh, I am sure I shall like banking, Mrs. Hargrave,” said I, with fine condescension. “Of course,” I continued, waving my hand in imitation of my father, who would gesticulate in that manner in a very impressive and polished way: “if I had an income of my own, however small, I should have preferred to continue as I was. But necessity is one of those things to which noblemen as well as ploughmen must submit.” “True,” said my uncle with a nod. “Help yourself to more wine.” “I should have thought,” observed my candid aunt with a face full of sober honesty, and in a tone that quite forbade all notion that any irony was intended, “that you would have been able to marry very well.” “Oh, oh! give him time--give him time!” chuckled my uncle. “I have never been in love,” said I. Conny’s deep eyes, full of mournfulness, met mine. “I have a great horror, Mrs. Hargrave,” I went on, “of men who marry only for money.” “And so have I,” said Conny. “Eh? you?” cried her papa, fondly. “What do you know of these matters?” “Money,” I observed--a sucking Daniel come to judgment!--“is no doubt very necessary; but I never will admit that it can be the foundation of married happiness.” Nobody at that table had said that it was; and the observation was therefore uncalled for. But I used to be a lover of slashing commonplaces. “I quite agree with you,” said Conny, looking, as she spoke, a thorough child of sensibility. “Mayn’t love and money be sometimes combined?” suggested my aunt deferentially, as if henceforth and for ever she never meant to be sure of anything until I had given judgment.