“Pretty well,” answered Cherry. “I couldn’t help doing so.”
“I should like to know the people in Elderthwaite,” said Virginia.
“It would be a very good thing for some of them if you did.”
“Ah!” she said, suddenly, “but Uncle James will not let me do so.”
“Ah!” said Cherry, with an inflection in his voice that Virginia did not understand. Then he added quickly, “What did you want to do?”
“I wanted,” said Virginia, moved, she hardly knew why, to confidence as they walked on side by side, “to go to the cottages sometimes, and perhaps teach some of the children. Don’t you think it would be right?”
“I think it would hardly do for you to go about at haphazard among the cottagers.”
“But why? I am used to poor people,” said Virginia.
Her sentences were short, because she was afraid of letting her voice tremble; but she looked at him earnestly, and how could he tell her that many of the people whom she wished to benefit owed her family grudges deep enough to make her unwelcome within their walls, how betray to her that the revelations they might make to her would affect her relations to her own family more than she could hope to affect their lives in return. But Cheriton was never deaf to other people’s troubles, and he answered with great gentleness—
“Because we’re a rough set up here in the North, and they would scarcely understand your kind motives. But the children—I wish you could get hold of them! I do wish something could be done for them. What did the old parson say to you?”