Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? Because, if it is to spite her, I should think - but you know best - that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think - but you know best - she was not worth gaining over.
A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.
I don't suppose there's a man going, as possesses the fondness for youth that I do. There's youth to the amount of eight hundredpound a-year, at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I'd take sixteen hundred pound worth, if I could get 'em, and be as fond of every individual twenty pound among 'em as nothing should equal it!
There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat brooding on the earth, and in the sky. But, the red light came cheerily towards him from the windows; figures passed and repassed there; and the hum and murmur of voices greeted his ear sweetly.
And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.