“He forgives his enemies, no doubt, heaping coals of fire on their heads.”
“You will witness it Morris. You will see him among them, and it will make your heart glow. Poor creatures! I have heard some of them own to him, from their sick beds, with dread and tears, that they broke his windows, and slandered his name. Then you should see him smile when he tells them that is all over now, and that they will not mistake him so much again.”
“No, never. He has shown himself now what he is.”
“He sat up two nights with one poor boy who is now likely to get through; and in the middle of the second night, the boy’s father got up from his sick bed in the next room, and came to my brother, to say that he felt that ill luck would be upon them all, if he did not confess that he put that very boy behind the hedge, with stones in his hand, to throw at Edward, the day he was mobbed at the almshouses. He was deluded by the neighbours, he said, into thinking that my brother meant ill by the poor.”
“They have learned to the contrary now, my dear. And what does Sir William Hunter say of my master, now-a-days? Do you know?”
“There is very little heard of Sir William and Lady Hunter at present—shut up at home as they are. But Dr Levitt, who loves to make peace, you know, and tell what is pleasant, declares that Sir William Hunter has certainly said that, after all, it does not so much signify which way a man votes at an election, if he shows a kind heart to his neighbours in troublesome times.”
“Sir William Hunter has learned his lesson then, it seems, from this affliction. I suppose he sees that one who does his duty as my master does at a season like this, is just the one to vote according to his conscience at an election. But, my dear, what sort of a heart have these Hunters got, that they shut themselves up as you say?”
“They give their money freely: and that is all that we can expect from them. If they have always been brought up and accustomed to fear sickness, and danger, and death, we cannot expect that they should lose their fear at a time like this. We must be thankful for what they give; and their money has been of great service, though there is no doubt that their example would have been of more.”
“One would like to look into their minds, and see how they regard my master there.”
“They regard him, no doubt, so far rightly as to consider him quite a different sort of person from themselves, and no rule for them. So far they are right. They do not comprehend his satisfactions and ease of mind; and it is very likely that they have pleasures of their own which we do not understand.”