Then, beside their moral offensiveness, they were such 'idiots,' and: 'noodles,' and botching and blundering right and left, so palpably to the danger and ruin of their employers, that no man of conscience could sit easy and see it going on; and all this simply because he had fixed his affections upon the practice of the one, and the agency of the other.

For Sturk had, in his own belief, a genius for business of every sort.

Everybody on whom his insolent glance fell, who had any sort of business to do, did it wrong, and was a 'precious disciple,' or a 'goose,' or a 'born jackass,' and excited his scoffing chuckle.

And little Mrs.Sturk, frightened and admiring, used to say, while he grinned and muttered, and tittered into the fire, with his great shoulders buried in his balloon-backed chair, his heels over the fender and his hands in his breeches' pockets--'But, Barney, you know, you're so clever--there's no one like you!' And he was fond of just nibbling at speculations in a small safe way, and used to pull out a roll of bank-notes, when he was lucky, and show his winnings to his wife, and chuckle and swear over them, and boast and rail, and tell her, if it was not for the cursed way his time was cut up with hospital, and field days, and such trumpery regimental duties, he could make a fortune while other men were thinking of it; and he very nearly believed it.

And he was, doubtless, clear-headed, though wrong-headed, too, at times, and very energetic; but his genius was for pushing men out of their places to make way for himself.
But with all that he had the good brute instincts too, and catered diligently for his brood, and their 'dam'-- and took a gruff unacknowledged pride in seeing his wife well dressed--and had a strong liking for her--and thanked her in his soul for looking after things so well; and thought often about his boys, and looked sharply after their education; and was an efficient and decisive head of a household; and had no vices nor expensive indulgences; and was a hard but tolerably just man to deal with.
All this time his uneasiness and puzzle about Dangerfield continued, and, along with other things, kept him awake often to unseasonable hours at night.