"Ah, you do good by stealth and blush to find it fame," said the lady.
"I don't know if you can call it doing good. I give very little of my money away, though I certainly do spend a good deal of my time among the abjectly poor. I became a sort of confidential adviser to a good many of them, a kind of honorary amateur solicitor. I drifted into it somehow or other. I acted as a sort of buffer between the East End Lazarus and his landlord. I was instrumental in obtaining for Lazarus certain rights which had been long in abeyance in the East End; either my client didn't know his rights, or he found them difficult to enforce; the landlords would screw the uttermost farthing out of the poor wretches in the shape of rent, and if they didn't pay they were sold up. The quid pro quo they got for their rent was simply a place to rot and die in—no water, no drains, no ventilation, no anything. Then there was the sweating system; women working fifteen or sixteen hours a day for a pittance of ninepence: women doing men's work and getting next to nothing for it; and the attempted redress of a thousand and one nameless grievances and horrors."
"Oh, Lord Spunyarn," cried Mrs. Dodd, "would that I could walk hand in hand with you through those dreadful places, sharing in such work."
"I have no doubt Dodd could exchange and become one of the wise men of the East, if he tried," said Haggard maliciously.
"Ah, dear Mr. Haggard, my husband was never formed for missionary work. Ever since my girlhood I have tried to rouse his enthusiasm, but in vain. I don't believe he has any enthusiasm," and here the voice of the Reverend John Dodd was heard in an unctuous whisper addressing Colonel Spurbox in commendation of the dish in front of him, to which he helped himself copiously for the second time.
"I'm quite certain, my dear sir, that there is no more successful way of accommodating the freshly-killed partridge than in a salmi. I say this advisedly, and after many years' experience. I speak feelingly, colonel. Till the fourth you can't do better than stick to salmi; I always do."
"There's no want of enthusiasm in that, anyhow, Dodd," said Spunyarn with a smile, while the two young men laughed aloud.
"Ah," sighed the vicaress in a stage whisper, "forgive his little weakness; he will hanker after the flesh-pots—the flesh-pots of Egypt."
"Be exact, my dear, be exact," cried the vicar; "it was quail, probably roast quail, though that is a succulent dish, that is referred to; certainly not salmi of partridges."