"How much do you get for making these spars ?" "Hush--father's up-stairs awake, and he don't know that I am doing his work." "Well, now tell me," said the man, more softly.

"How much do you get ?" "Eighteenpence a thousand," she said, reluctantly.
"Who are you making them for ?" "Mr.Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here." "And how many can you make in a day ?" "In a day and half the night, three bundles--that's a thousand and a half." "Two and threepence." The barber paused.

"Well, look here," he continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present purse and the woman's love of comeliness, "here's a sovereign--a gold sovereign, almost new." He held it out between his finger and thumb.
"That's as much as you'd earn in a week and a half at that rough man's work, and it's yours for just letting me snip off what you've got too much of." The girl's bosom moved a very little.

"Why can't the lady send to some other girl who don't value her hair--not to me ?" she exclaimed.
"Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and 'tis a shade you can't match by dyeing.

But you are not going to refuse me now I've come all the way from Sherton o' purpose ?" "I say I won't sell it--to you or anybody." "Now listen," and he drew up a little closer beside her.