Page:Far from the Madding Crowd Vol 1.djvu/192

 no meat in gentlemen's houses!" said Mark Clark, in the manner of a man ready to burst all links of habit.

"A headstrong maid, that's what she is—and won't listen to no advice at all. Pride and vanity have ruined many a cobbler's dog. Dear, dear, when I think of it, I sorrows like a man in travel!"

"True, Henery, you do, I've heard ye," said Joseph Poorgrass, in a voice of thorough attestation, and with a wire-drawn smile of misery.

Twould do a martel man no harm to have what's under her bonnet," said Billy Smallbury, who had just entered, bearing his one tooth before him. "She can spaik real language, and must have some sense somewhere. Do ye conceive me?"

"I do, I do; but no baily—I deserved that place," wailed Henery, signifying wasted genius by gazing blankly at visions of a high destiny apparently visible to him on Billy Smallbury's smock-frock. "There, 'twas to be, I suppose. Your lot is your lot, and Scripture is nothing; for if you do good you don't get rewarded according to your works, but are cheated in some mean way out of your recompense."

"No, no; I don't agree with'ee there," said Mark Clark, decisively. "God's a perfect gentleman in that respect."