Four hundred's not enough to satisfy a mercenary individual, but it's enough to enable a woman to marry for love--and not for a home!" He spoke with a kind of repressed bitterness, as though memory had stirred into fresh flame the embers of some burnt-out passion of regret, and Sara looked at him with suddenly aroused interest.
But apparently Patrick did not sense the question that troubled on her lips, or, if he did, had no mind to answer it, for he went on in lighter tones: "There, that's enough about business for the present.

I only wanted you to know that, whatever happens, you will be all right as far as bread-and-cheese are concerned." "I believe you think that's all I should care about!" exclaimed Sara stormily.
Patrick smiled.

He had not been a citizen of the world for over sixty years without acquiring the grim knowledge that neither intense happiness nor deep grief suffice to deaden for very long the pinpricks of material discomfort.

But the worldly-wise old man possessed a broad tolerance for the frailties of human nature, and his smile held nothing of contempt, but only a whimsical humour touched with kindly understanding.
"I know you better than that, my dear," he answered quietly.

"But I often think of what I once heard an old working-woman, down in the village, say.