"You mean, just as I am, without any means of maintaining a wife.
Of course: I am but three-and-twenty."

"In that last point you will alter. But I am not so sure of any
other alteration. My father says an idle man ought not to exist,
much less, be married."

"Then I am to blow my brains out?"

"No; on the whole I should think you would do better to pass your
examination. I have heard Mr. Farebrother say it is disgracefully easy."

"That is all very fine. Anything is easy to him. Not that
cleverness has anything to do with it. I am ten times cleverer
than many men who pass."

"Dear me!" said Mary, unable to repress her sarcasm; "that accounts
for the curates like Mr. Crowse. Divide your cleverness by ten,
and the quotient--dear me!--is able to take a degree. But that only
shows you are ten times more idle than the others."

"Well, if I did pass, you would not want me to go into the Church?"

"That is not the question--what I want you to do. You have a
conscience of your own, I suppose. There! there is Mr. Lydgate.
I must go and tell my uncle."

"Mary," said Fred, seizing her hand as she rose; "if you will not
give me some encouragement, I shall get worse instead of better."