Maverick gave an odd little laugh that puzzled the other.
"See here, Maverick," began Jack in such earnest that he blushed like a great boy, "I haven't found any new place for myself. The world seems just full and running over. The great cities have their own men out of employment, and hordes from every other place. I'd be almost ashamed to ask for a job. I declare, I'd rather raise as much of my living as I could in our back garden, or take Perley's farm, and put it together, and set men raising strawberries, than tramp round, asking for work, with a feeling that it was taken from some one who had a better right, who was a native of the soil."
"Then you have not lost your conscience?"
"I hope not. It is the same old story everywhere. What is to be done about it?" and Jack knit his brows. "I have been going over the books that I thought would help or let in a little light on the matter, but it is a wisdom hard to get at. How to make more work in the world, how to cheapen living, how to"—
"Bring about the millennium! What dead earnest you are in, Darcy!"
"Weren't you in earnest a moment ago, Maverick, when you talked about the praying and the bread and broth?" said Jack with a great knot drawn in his brow.
"Yes, Heaven knows. And some one must take hold of the thing who has eyes to see, and brains, and—and money. You see, people have crowded into cities and towns, and if they could be sent out somewhere! Why don't we organize colonies or something of the sort? Now, there's Florida. Living is cheap, and in such a climate there are fewer needs of clothing and fuel. I have been wondering why the big dons in cities did not gather up the poor they have been feeding at soup-houses and everywhere, and send them out with some one to manage until they could stand alone. There would be less diphtherias and fevers and starvation; for that's its right name, Darcy. What can you do when one's system is all run out with meal-mush, and weak tea that is half willow-leaves, and such trash? There's Kilburn—he has had the name of being good to the poor this winter because he has given them trust at his store. Such stuff! I have looked into a few samples," and the expressive nostrils curled in disgust. "He makes an enormous profit, for he sells the poorest kind of goods to these people at the highest prices. Then he manages to get hold of something, house or furniture, or maybe clothes,—I don't know. He and Deacon Boyd—Darcy, how can a man honor religion when these two men are its exponents? So good to the poor! Pah! It makes me sick. Isn't there a cleaner air somewhere on God's earth? Can't they be taken out of this?"
"If they could be! There must be one way out, Maverick: better, perhaps, than going West where thousands are tramping about. And Heaven knows they need a new factor in civilization down there!"
The young eyes met in sudden hopeful animation. Had they solved even one strand of the great tangle, that worse than Gordian knot which could not be cut?
The door opened slowly; and there entered a middle-aged, rather grizzled man, with shaggy eyebrows, sparse beard, and bent shoulders. He glanced in hesitatingly, his eyes wandering down to Darcy.