“Poor things! they have a lot to bear.”
“The little children!” murmured Aunt Charlotte, with a flushing cheek and shining eyes; “it 's rather pathetic.”
“Children indeed!” said Mrs. Mattock. “It puts me out of all patience to see the way that they neglect them. People are so sentimental about the poor.”
Lady Bonington creaked again. Her splendid shoulders were wedged into her chair; her fine dark hair, gleaming with silver, sprang back upon her brow; a ruby bracelet glowed on the powerful wrist that held the journal; she rocked her copper-slippered foot. She did not appear to be too sentimental.
“I know they often have a very easy time,” said Mrs. Mattock, as if some one had injured her severely. And Shelton saw, not without pity, that Fate had scored her kind and squashed-up face with wrinkles, whose tiny furrows were eloquent of good intentions frustrated by the unpractical and discontented poor. “Do what you will, they are never satisfied; they only resent one's help, or else they take the help and never thank you for it!”
“Oh!” murmured Aunt Charlotte, “that's rather hard.”
Shelton had been growing, more uneasy. He said abruptly:
“I should do the same if I were they.”
Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes flew at him; Lady Bonington spoke to the Times; her ruby bracelet and a bangle jingled.
“We ought to put ourselves in their places.”