'We're only scratching at the surface,' Vida, said—'such an ugly surface, too! And the more we scratch, the uglier things come to light.'
'You make too much of that disappointment at Christmas.'
'I wasn't even thinking of the hundredth time you've been disillusioned.' Vida threw down her table napkin, and stood up. 'I was thinking of people like our young parson cousin.'
'George——'
Vida made a shrug of half-impatient, half-humorous assent. 'Leaves the Bishop's Palace and comes to London. He, too, wants "to live for the poor." Never for an instant one of them. Always the patron—the person something may be got out of—or, at all events, hoped from.'
She seemed to be about to leave the room, but as her sister answered with some feeling, 'No, no, they love and respect him!' Vida paused, and brought up by the fire that the sudden cold made comforting.
'George is a different man since he's found his vocation,' Mrs. Fox-Moore insisted. 'You read it in his face.'
'Oh, if all you mean is that he's happier, why not? He's able to look on himself as a benefactor. He's tasting the intoxication of the King among Beggars.'
'You are grossly unfair, Vida.'
'So he thinks when I challenge him: "What good, what earthly good, is all this unless an anodyne—for you—is good?"'