orehead, 'That's the way the wind d'blow, is it?' he said.

'Mother,' exclaimed Stephen, 'how absurdly you speak! Criticizing
whether she's fit for me or no, as if there were room for doubt on
the matter! Why, to marry her would be the great blessing of my
life--socially and practically, as well as in other respects. No such
good fortune as that, I'm afraid; she's too far above me. Her family
doesn't want such country lads as I in it.'

'Then if they don't want you, I'd see them dead corpses before I'd want
them, and go to better families who do want you.'

'Ah, yes; but I could never put up with the distaste of being welcomed
among such people as you mean, whilst I could get indifference among
such people as hers.'

'What crazy twist o' thinking will enter your head next?' said his
mother. 'And come to that, she's not a bit too high for you, or you too
low for her. See how careful I be to keep myself up. I'm sure I never
stop for more than a minute together to talk to any journeymen people;
and I never invite anybody to our party o' Christmases who are not
in business for themselves. And I talk to several toppermost carriage
people that come to my lord's without saying ma'am or sir to 'em, and
they take it as quiet as lambs.'

'You curtseyed to the vicar, mother; and I wish you hadn't.'

'But it was before he called me by my Christian name, or he would have
got very little curtseying from me!' said Mrs. Smith, bridling and
sparkling with vexation. 'You go on at me, Stephen, as if I were your
worst enemy! What else could I do with the man to get rid of him,
banging it into me and your father by side and by seam, about his
greatness, and what happened when he was a young fellow at college, and
I don't know what-all; the tongue o' en flopping round his mouth like a
mop-rag round a dairy. That 'a did, didn't he, John?'

'That's about the size o't,' replied her husband.

'Every woman now-a-days,' resumed Mrs. Smith, 'if she marry at all, must
expect a father-in-law of a rank lower than her father. The men have
gone up so, and the women have stood still. Every man you meet is more
the dand than his father; and you are just level wi' her.'

'That's what she thinks herself.'

'It only shows her sense. I knew she was after 'ee, Stephen--I knew it.'

'After me! Good Lord, what next!'

'And I really must say again that you ought not to be in such a hurry,
and wait for a few years. You might go higher than a bankrupt