"Hum!" said Miss Hancock, unenthusiastic on the subject of choking cats. "Do you always feed your animals on—good food?"
"Yes, of course."
"You are very young, and, of course, it is no affair of mine, but I think in housekeeping—having first of all regard to waste—one ought to consider how many poor people are starving. I send all my scraps to the St Mark's Refuge Home, an excellent institution."
"I used to give a lot of food away," said Fanny, "but I found it didn't pay, people didn't want it. We had a barrel of beer that no one drank, so I gave a tramp a jugful once, and he made a mark somewhere on the house, and after that twenty or thirty tramps a day called. We couldn't find the mark, so father had to have the whole lower part of the house lime-washed, and the gate pillars. After that he said no more food was to be given away, or beer."
"There are poor and poor. To give beer to a tramp is in my opinion a distinctly wicked act; it is simply feeding the flames of drunkenness, as Mr Bulders says. You have heard of Mr Bulders?"
"N—no."
"I must introduce you. I hope you will like him, he is a great friend of ours. Your Christian name is Fanny, I believe. May I call you Fanny?"
"Yes," said Fanny. "How queer it is, nobody knows me for—I mean, everybody always asks me that before I have known them for more——"
"Everybody?"
"Yes."