"No, ma'am, I did not know. Is it really this Mr. Brooke? The name, you see, is not so uncommon as some, and I did not think——"
"I know, I know," said Lesley, hurriedly. "But just tell me this—is it true? Do the poor people suffer as much in England as he says they do?"
"Oh yes, ma'am, I'm afraid so, at least. I've seen a good deal of suffering in my day."
Lesley was quiet for a little while, and the woman brushed out her shining hair. "Tell me," she said, "what is the worst suffering of all—will you? I mean, a suffering caused by being poor—nothing to do with your own life, of course. Is it the being hungry, or cold—or what?"
Kingston considered for a moment. "I think," she said at last, "it isn't the being cold or hungry yourself that matters so much as seeing those that belong to you cold and hungry. That's the worst. If you have children, it does go to your heart to hear them ask you for something to eat, and you have nothing to give them."
"Yes," said Lesley, softly, "I should think that is the worst."
"But I don't know," said Kingston, in a perfectly unmoved and stolid tone, "whether it's worse than having no candles."
Lesley looked up in astonishment.
"It's when any one's ill that you feel that," the woman went on, in the same level tones. "In winter it's dark, maybe, at four o'clock, and not light again till nearly nine in the morning. It doesn't matter so much if you can go out. But if you have to sit by some one who's ill, and you can't see their faces, and if they leave off moaning you think they're dead—and perhaps when the early morning light comes it's only a dead face you have to look upon, and you never saw them draw their last breath—why, then, you feel mad-like to think of the candles that are wasted in big houses and of the bread that's thrown away."
Lesley listened, appalled. A homely detail of this kind impressed her more than any appeal to her higher imagination. The woes of the poor had suddenly become real.