him, stayed him in the road. "She is doing her own work, and if you were speaking of her with reference to any other household than your own, you would say so. Is it not a comfort to you to know that your wife has a woman near her at such a time as this, and a woman, too, who can speak to her as one lady does to another?"
"These are comforts which we have no right to expect. I could not have done much for poor Mary, but what a man could have done should not have been wanting."
"I am sure of it; I know it well. What any man could do by himself you would do—excepting one thing." And the dean, as he spoke, looked full into the other's face.
"And what is there I would not do?" said Crawley.
"Sacrifice your own pride."
"My pride?"
"Yes, your own pride."
"I have had but little pride this many a day. Arabin, you do not know what my life has been. How is a man to be proud who—" And then he stopped himself, not wishing to go through the catalogue of those grievances which, as he thought, had killed the very germs of pride within him, or to insist by spoken words on his poverty, his wants, and the injustice of his position. "No, I wish I could be proud; but the world has been too heavy to me, and I have forgotten all that."
"How long have I known you, Crawley?"
"How long? Ah dear! a lifetime nearly, now."
"And we were like brothers once."
"Yes, we were equal as brothers then—in our fortunes, our tastes, and our modes of life."
"And yet you would begrudge me the pleasure of putting my hand in my pocket, and relieving the inconveniences which have been thrown on you, and those you love better than yourself, by the chances of your fate in life."
"I will live on no man's charity," said Crawley, with an abruptness which amounted almost to an expression of anger.
"And is not that pride?"
"No—yes—it is a species of pride, but not that pride of which you spoke. A man can not be honest if he have not some pride. You yourself—would you not rather starve than become a beggar?"
