"Well, I am sorry for the Hardens.
They tell me they give all their substance away--already--and every one says it is going to be a particularly bad winter.

The living, I hear, is worth nothing.

All the same, I should wish them to look more cheerful.
It is the first duty of martyrs." Marcella looked at her mother indignantly.

It seemed to her often that she said the most heartless things imaginable.
"Cheerful!" she said--"in a village like this--with all the young men drifting off to London, and all the well-to-do people dissenters--no one to stand by him--no money and no helpers--the people always ill--wages eleven and twelve shillings a week--and only the old wrecks of men left to do the work! He might, I think, expect the people in _this_ house to back him up a little.

All he asks is that papa should go and satisfy himself with his own eyes as to the difference between our property and Lord Maxwell's--" "Lord Maxwell's!" cried Mr.Boyce, rousing himself from a state of half-melancholy, half-sleepy reverie by the fire, and throwing away his cigarette--"Lord Maxwell! Difference! I should think so.