He laid his hand kindly on the invalid's big shoulder.
"I don't say but that a wife's a good exchange for the world, my boy; I'm glad you should feel it, too.

But when you marry her, you promise to support her, as long as you have strength and health to do it.

It's a natural and necessary consequence of your love for her"-- and here the professor paused a moment to marvel at the position in which he found himself--stating the first axioms of life to such a man as this pupil of his; "and you should be unwilling to take her, as I certainly should be to give her, on any other terms.

If your hands are empty, you must at any rate be able to show that they won't always continue so." "Well, but I don't want to think about that just now; I can be a farmer, or a clerk; I can make a living with my body, if I can't with my mind; and I can write to Mrs.Vanderplanck, some time, and find out just how things are." "Very well--very well! or perhaps I'd better write to her myself--well--and as long as you are on your back, there'll be no use in troubling you with business--that's certain! And perhaps things may turn out better than they look, in the end." As Professor Valeyon pronounced this latter sentence, he smiled to himself pleasantly and mysteriously.

He seemed to fancy he had stronger grounds for believing in a happy issue, than, for some reason, he was at liberty to disclose.