human
Comfortable quarters you have here, Mr. Moore; and all snug to yourself.
gpt
Yes, but my sister would be glad to see you, if you would prefer stepping into the house.
human
Oh no! The ladies are best alone, I never was a lady's man. You don't mistake me for my friend Sweeting, do you, Mr. Moore?
gpt
Sweeting! Which of them is that? The gentleman in the chocolate overcoat, or the little gentleman?
human
The little one--he of Nunnely; the cavalier of the Misses Sykes, with the whole six of whom he is in love, ha! ha!
gpt
Better be generally in love with all than specially with one, I should think, in that quarter.
human
But he is specially in love with one besides, for when I and Donne urged him to make a choice amongst the fair bevy, he named--which do you think?
gpt
Dora, of course, or Harriet.
human
Ha! ha! you've an excellent guess. But what made you hit on those two?
gpt
Because they are the tallest, the handsomest, and Dora, at least, is the stoutest; and as your friend Mr. Sweeting is but a little slight figure, I concluded that, according to a frequent rule in such cases, he preferred his contrast.
human
You are right; Dora it is. But he has no chance, has he, Moore?
gpt
What has Mr. Sweeting besides his curacy?
human
What has Sweeting? Why, David has his harp, or flute, which comes to the same thing. He has a sort of pinchbeck watch; ditto, ring; ditto, eyeglass. That's what he has.
gpt
How would he propose to keep Miss Sykes in gowns only?
human
Ha! ha! Excellent! I'll ask him that next time I see him. I'll roast him for his presumption. But no doubt he expects old Christopher Sykes would do something handsome. He is rich, is he not? They live in a large house.
gpt
Sykes carries on an extensive concern.
human
Therefore he must be wealthy, eh?
gpt
Therefore he must have plenty to do with his wealth, and in these times would be about as likely to think of drawing money from the business to give dowries to his daughters as I should be to dream of pulling down the cottage there, and constructing on its ruins a house as large as Fieldhead.
human
Do you know what I heard, Moore, the other day?
gpt
No. Perhaps that I _was_ about to effect some such change. Your Briarfield gossips are capable of saying that or sillier things.
human
That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease (I thought it looked a dismal place, by-the-bye, to-night, as I passed it), and that it was your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistress--to be married, in short, ha! ha! Now, which is it? Dora, I am sure. You said she was the handsomest.
gpt
I wonder how often it has been settled that I was to be married since I came to Briarfield. They have assigned me every marriageable single woman by turns in the district. Now it was the two Misses Wynns--first the dark, then the light one; now the red-haired Miss Armitage; then the mature Ann Pearson. At present you throw on my shoulders all the tribe of the Misses Sykes. On what grounds this gossip rests God knows. I visit nowhere; I seek female society about as assiduously as you do, Mr. Malone. If ever I go to Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a call in their counting-house, where our discussions run on other topics than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other things than courtships, establishments, dowries. The cloth we can't sell, the hands we can't employ, the mills we can't run, the perverse course of events generally, which we cannot alter, fill our hearts, I take it, pretty well at present, to the tolerably complete exclusion of such figments as love-making, etc.
human
I go along with you completely, Moore. If there is one notion I hate more than another, it is that of marriage--I mean marriage in the vulgar weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment--two beggarly fools agreeing to unite their indigence by some fantastic tie of feeling. Humbug! But an advantageous connection, such as can be formed in consonance with dignity of views and permanency of solid interests, is not so bad--eh?
gpt
No,