"Your thoughts are very gloomy, Sir Owen."
"You don't expect me to have gay thoughts to-day, do you, Mérat? So here is where you live, you and she; and that is her writing-table?"
"Yes; she sits there in the evening, quite contented, writing letters."
"To whom?" Owen asked. "To no one but priests and nuns?"
"Yes, she is very interested in her poor people, and she has to write a great many letters on their behalf."
"I know—to get them work." And they walked round the room. "Well,
Mérat, this isn't what we are accustomed to—this isn't like Park
Lane."
"Mademoiselle only cares for plain things now; if she had the money she would spend it all upon her poor people. It was a long time before I could persuade her to buy the sofa you have been sitting on just now; she has not had it above two months."
"And all these clothes, Mérat—what are they?"
"Oh, I have forgotten to take them away." And Mérat told him that these were clothes that Evelyn was making for her poor people—for little boys who were going upon a school-treat, mostly poor Irish; and Owen picked up a cap from the floor, and a little crooked smile came into his face when he heard it was intended for Paddy Sullivan.
"All the same, it is better she should think about poor people than about religion."