Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 7.pdf/397

 to, I'd marry her to-morrow. And my market value is seventy non res."

Lewisham looked round at him eagerly, suddenly interested. "Would you?" he said. Dunkerley's face was slightly flushed.

"Like a shot. Why not?"

"But how are you to live?"

"That comes after. If"

"I can't agree with you, Mr. Dunkerley," said Parkson. "I don't know if you have read 'Sesame and Lilies,' but there you have, set forth far more fairly than any words of mine could do, an ideal of a woman's place"

"All rot—'Sesame and Lilies, interrupted Dunkerley. "Read bits. Couldn't stand it. Never can stand Ruskin. Too many prepositions. Tremendous English, no doubt, but not my style. Sort of thing a wholesale grocer's daughter might read to get refined. We can't afford to get refined."

"But would you really marry a girl?" began Lewisham, with an unprecedented admiration for Dunkerley in his eyes.

"Why not?"

"On—?" Lewisham hesitated.

"Forty pounds a year res. Whack! Yes."

A silent youngster began to speak, cleared an accumulated huskiness from his throat and said, "Consider the girl."

"Why marry?" asked Bletherley, unregarded.

"You must admit you are asking a great thing when you want a girl" began Parkson.

"Not so. When a girl's chosen a man, and he