'Oh! You mean what girl's name?'
'You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair
creature's on the bark, Tom.'
'Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a
slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or
she might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing
me. I'd carve her name as often as she liked.'
'I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.'
'Mercenary,' repeated Tom. 'Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister.'
'Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?' said Louisa,
showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.
'You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,' returned her brother
sulkily. 'If it does, you can wear it.'
'Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and
then,' said Mr. Harthouse. 'Don't believe him, Mrs. Bounderby. He
knows much better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of you,
privately expressed to me, unless he relents a little.'
'At all events, Mr. Harthouse,' said Tom, softening in his
admiration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, 'you
can't tell her that I ever praised her for being mercenary.
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