"But what can be done? What more can I do, for instance?"
"Do? Ye can do not mich, poor young lass! Ye've gi'en your brass; ye've done well. If ye could transport your tenant, Mr. Moore, to Botany Bay, ye'd happen do better. Folks hate him."
"William, for shame!" exclaimed Caroline warmly. "If folks do hate him, it is to their disgrace, not his. Mr. Moore himself hates nobody. He only wants to do his duty, and maintain his rights. You are wrong to talk so."
"I talk as I think. He has a cold, unfeeling heart, yond' Moore."
"But," interposed Shirley, "supposing Moore was driven from the country, and his mill razed to the ground, would people have more work?"
"They'd have less. I know that, and they know that; and there is many an honest lad driven desperate by the certainty that whichever way he turns he cannot better himself; and there is dishonest men plenty to guide them to the devil, scoundrels that reckons to be the 'people's friends,' and that knows nought about the people, and is as insincere as Lucifer. I've lived aboon forty year in the world, and I believe that 'the people' will never have any true friends but theirseln and them two or three good folk i' different stations that is friends to all the world. Human natur', taking it i' th' lump, is nought but selfishness. It is but excessive few, it is but just an exception here and there, now and then, sich as ye two young uns and me, that, being in a different sphere, can understand t' one t' other, and be friends wi'out slavishness o' one hand or pride o' t' other. Them that reckons to be friends to a lower class than their own fro' political motives is never to be trusted; they always try to make their inferiors tools. For my own part, I will neither be patronized nor misled for no man's pleasure. I've had overtures made to me lately that I saw were treacherous, and I flung 'em back i' the faces o' them that offered 'em."
"You won't tell us what overtures?"
"I will not. It would do no good. It would mak no difference. Them they concerned can look after theirseln."
"Ay, we'se look after werseln," said another voice. Joe Scott had sauntered forth from the church to get a breath of fresh air, and there he stood.
"I'll warrant ye, Joe," observed William, smiling.