Mr. Kane did not look shocked or grieved; he turned a cogitating glance upon her, and she saw that he diagnosed the state of mind that could make such a suggestion and could not take it seriously. He smiled, though a little gravely, in answering: 'Why, no, I don't think so; and I don't believe you think so, Miss Buchanan. What you want to give him is a hold on himself, hope, and self-respect; it wouldn't give you self-respect to be whipped, would it?'
'It might give me discretion,' said Helen, smiling back.
'We don't want human beings to have the discretion of animals; we want them to have the discretion of men,' said Franklin; 'that is, self-mastery and wisdom.'
Helen did not feel able to argue the point; indeed, it did not interest her; but she asked Mr. Kane, some days later, how his roadside friend was progressing towards the discretion of a man.
'Oh, he'll be all right,' said Franklin. 'He'll pull round. Self-suggestion will do it. It's not a bad case. He couldn't get hold of the idea at first—he's not very bright; but I found out that he'd got some very useful religious notions, and I work it in on these.'
From the housekeeper, a friend of her youth, Helen learned that in the village Mr. Kane's ministrations to Jim Betts were regarded with surprise, yet not without admiration. He was supposed to be some strange sort of foreign clergyman, not to be placed in any recognisable category. 'He's a very kind gentleman, I'm sure,' said Mrs. Fielding.
Mr. Kane was fond, Helen also observed, of entering into conversation with the servants. The butler's political views—which were guarded—he determinedly pursued, undeterred by Baines's cautious and deferential retreats. He considered the footman as a potential friend, whatever the footman might consider him. Their common manhood, in Franklin's eyes, entirely outweighed the slight, extraneous accidents of fortune—nay, these differences gave an additional interest. The footman had, no doubt, a point of view novel and valuable, if one could get at it. Franklin did not attempt to get at it by any method subversive of order or interfering with Thomas's duties; he observed all the conventions demanded by varying function. But Helen, strolling one morning before breakfast outside the dining-room windows, heard within and paused to listen to Mr. Kane's monotonous and slightly nasal tones as he shared the morning news with Thomas, who, with an air of bewildered if obedient attention, continued his avocations between the sideboard and the breakfast-table.
'Now I should say,' Franklin remarked, 'that something of that sort—Germany's doing wonders with it—could be worked here in England if you set yourselves to it.'
'Yes, sir,' said Thomas.
'Berlin has eliminated the slums, you know,' said Franklin, looking thoughtfully at Thomas over the top of the paper. 'What do you feel about it, all of you over here? It's a big question, you know, that of the housing of the poor.'