At the age of sixteen did he not declare his resolve to wed the daughter of old Sally Budge, who went about selling watercress?
and was there not a desperate conflict at home before this project could be driven from his head?
It was but the first of many such instances.

Had he been left to his own devices, he would already, like numbers of his coevals, have been supporting (or declining to support) a wife and two or three children.
At present he was 'engaged' to Clem Peckover; that was an understood thing.

His father did not approve it, but this connection was undeniably better than those he had previously declared or concealed.
Bob, it seemed evident, was fated to make a _mesalliance_--a pity, seeing his parts and prospects.

He might have aspired to a wife who had scarcely any difficulty with her _h_'s; whose bringing-up enabled her to look with compassion on girls who could not play the piano; who counted among her relatives not one collarless individual.
Clem, as we have seen, had already found, or imagined, cause for dissatisfaction with her betrothed.

She was well enough acquainted with Bob's repute, and her temper made it improbable, to say the least, that the course of wooing would in this case run very smoothly.