"I must not repine," returned Marks. "There are more men in my case than in yours. No doubt it is well for me," he continued, dropping his voice, with a sigh. "Were your favoured lot mine, sir, I might find so much good in it as to forget that this world is not our home." Perhaps it had never struck the Squire before how much he was to be envied; but Marks put it strongly. "You'd find crosses and cares enough in my place, I can tell you, Marks, of one sort or another. Johnny, here, knows how I am bothered sometimes." "No doubt of it," replied Marks, with a smile. "No lot on earth can be free from its duties and responsibilities; and they must of necessity entail care. That is one thing, Mr. Todhetley; but to be working away your life at high pressure--and to know that you are working it away--is another." "You acknowledge, then, that you are working too hard, Marks," said the Squire. "I know I am, sir. But there's no help for it." "It is a pity." "Why it should begin to tell upon me so early I don't know. There are numbers of other men, who work as long and as hard as I do, and are seemingly none the worse for it." "The time will come though when they will be, I presume." "As surely as that sun is shining in the sky." "Possibly you have been more anxious than they, Marks." "It may be so. My conscience has always been in my work, to do it efficiently. I fear, too, I am rather sensitively organized as to nerves and brain. Upon those who are so, I fancy work tells sooner than on others." The Squire put his arm within Marks's. "You must have a bit of a struggle to get along, too, on your small salary." "True: and it all helps. Work and struggle together are not the most desirable combination. But for being obliged to increase my means by some stratagem or other, I should not have taken on the additional evening's work." "How long are you at it, now, of an evening?" "Usually about two hours. On Saturdays and at Christmas-time longer." "And I suppose you must continue this night-work?" "Yes. I get fifty pounds a year for it. And I assure you I should not know how to spare one pound of the fifty. No one knows the expenses of children, except those who have to look at every shilling before it can be spent." There was a pause. Mr. Marks stooped, plucked a cowslip and held it to his lips. "Don't you think, Marks," resumed the Squire, in a confidential, friendly tone, "that you were just a little imprudent to marry?" "No, I do not think I was," he replied slowly, as if considering the question. "I did not marry very early: I was eight-and-twenty; and I had got together the wherewithal to furnish a house, and something in hand besides. The question was mooted among us at Brown's the other day--whether it was wiser, or not, for young clerks to marry. There is a great deal to be urged both ways--against marrying and against remaining single." "What can you urge against remaining single?"