Pooke and Pepperill had not been on the best of terms. Pooke for some time had been churchwarden, but in a fit of pique had thrown up the office, when Pepperill had been elected in his room. But Pooke had not intended his resignation to be accepted seriously. He had withdrawn to let the parish feel that it had absolutely no one else fit to take his place, and he had anticipated that he would have been entreated to reconsider his resignation. When, however, Pepperill stepped into his vacant office, and everything went on as usual, Pooke was very irate, and spoke of the supplanter with bitterness and contempt. “How do y’ do?” said Pooke, and extended his hand with gracious condescension, such as he only used to the rector and to those whom he considered sufficiently well-off to deserve his salutation. “What have you come here about?—that matter of Jan?” “Well, now,” answered Pepperill, with a side look at a servant, “between ourselves, you know, we are men who conduct business in a different way from the general run.” “Get along with you, Anne,” said Pooke to the maid. “Now we are by ourselves, what is it? That boy Jan is headstrong. It runs in the blood. I married, clean contrary to my father’s wishes, just because I knew he didn’t like the girl. I don’t think that it was anything else made me do it. But your niece, Kitty, has money.” “Money? oh, of course! We are a moneyed family.” “That is well. Mine is a moneyed family. One cannot be comfortable oneself without money, nor have anything to do comfortably with other people unless they’re moneyed. I have often thought there is a great gulf fixed between the comfortably off and those who are in poor circumstances, and those who are in comfort can’t pass to the other side—not right they should; let them make their associates among the comfortably off. That’s my doctrine.” “And mine also,” said Pasco. “I like to hear you talk like this—it’s wholesome.” “Well, and what do you want with me?” Pepperill crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and crossed them again. “I’ve been doing a lot o’ business lately,” said he. “So I hear. But do you want to do business with me? I bought your orchard and meadow. There I think you did wrong. Hold on to land; never let that go—that’s my doctrine. You got rid of it, and where are you now? In Coombe Cellars, without as much as five acres around it of your own.” “I never was calculated to be a farmer,” said Pasco. “My head was always set on a commercial life, and I can’t say I regret it. A lot of money has passed through my hands.” “I don’t care so much for the passing as the sticking of money,” retorted Pooke. “Well, in my line, money comes in with a tide and goes out with a tide. When it is out, it is very much out indeed; but I have only to wait awhile, and, sure as anything in nature, in comes the tide once more.” Pooke’s stony eye was fixed on Pepperill. “Which is it now—high tide or low water?” “There it is—low.” “Oh!”