“Yes,” he said at last, “I see how we can manage it. You shall have a boat for your own use, my lady, and——”
“But I want to see just what you see, and to feel, as nearly as I may, what you feel. I don’t want a downy, rose-leaf notion of the thing. I want to understand what you fishermen encounter and experience.”
“We must make a difference though, my lady. Look what clothes, what boots we fishers must wear to be fit for our work! But you shall have a true idea as far as it reaches, and one that will go a long way towards enabling you to understand the rest. You shall go in a real fishing-boat, with a full crew and all the nets, and you shall catch real herrings; only you shall not be out longer than you please.—But there is hardly time to arrange for it to-night, my lady.”
“To-morrow then?”
“Yes. I have no doubt I can manage it then.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Clementina. “It will be a great delight.”
“And now,” suggested Malcolm, “would you like to go through the village, and see some of the cottages, and how the fishers live?”
“If they would not think me inquisitive, or intrusive,” answered Clementina.
“There is no danger of that,” rejoined Malcolm. “If it were my Lady Bellair, to patronize, and deal praise and blame, as if what she calls poverty were fault and childishness, and she their spiritual as well as social superior, they might very likely be what she would call rude. She was here once before, and we have some notion of her about the Seaton. I venture to say there is not a woman in it who is not her moral superior, and many of them are her superiors in intellect and true knowledge, if they are not so familiar with London scandal. Mr Graham says that in the kingdom of heaven every superior is a ruler, for there to rule is to raise, and a man’s rank is his power to uplift.”
“I would I were in the kingdom of heaven, if it be such as you and Mr Graham take it for,” said Clementina.