e parson shrugged his shoulders.

"I'll tell you what I've been thinking of," said the Captain. "If I
could get a farm of four or five hundred acres--"

"A farm!" exclaimed the parson.

"Why not a farm? I know that a man can do nothing with a farm unless
he has capital. He should have L10 or L12 an acre for his land, I
suppose. I should have that and some trifle of an income besides if
I sold out. I suppose my uncle would let me have a farm under him?"

"He'd see you--further first."

"Why shouldn't I do as well with a farm as another?"

"Why not turn shoemaker? Because you have not learned the business.
Farmer, indeed! You'd never get the farm, and if you did, you would
not keep it for three years. You've been in the army too long to be
fit for anything else, Walter."

Captain Marrable looked black and angry at being so counselled; but
he believed what was said to him, and had no answer to make to it.

"You must stick to the army," continued the old man; "and if you'll
take my advice, you'll do so without the impediment of a wife."

"That's quite out of the question."

"Why is it out of the question?"

"How can you ask me, Uncle John? Would you have me go back from an
engagement after I have made it?"

"I would have you go back from anything that was silly."

"And tell a girl, after I have asked her to be my wife, that I don't
want to have anything more to do with her?"

"I should not tell her that; but I should make her understand, both
for her own sake and for mine, that we had been too fast, and that
the sooner we gave up our folly the better for both of us. You can't
marry her, that's the truth of it."

"You'll see if I can't."

"If you choose to wait ten years, you may."

"I won't wait ten months, nor, if I can have my own way, ten weeks."
What a pity that Mary could not have heard him. "Half the fellows in
the army are married without anything beyond their pay; and I'm to
be told that we can't get along with L300 a year? At any rate, we'll
try."

"Marry in haste, and repent at leisure," said Uncle John.

"According to the doctrines that are going now-a-days," said the
Captain, "it will be held soon that a gentleman can't marry unless
he has got L3000 a year. It is the most heartless, damnable teaching
that ever came up. It spoils the men, and makes women, when they do
marry, expect ever so many things that they ought never to want."

"And you mean to teach them better, Walter?"

"I mean