“Oh, yes, my gal! All very pretty while the summer lasts, but when the winter comes where would you be?” said the man who had been called Jim.
“Out of the London fog,” was the reply, and there was a general laugh at that.
“But how about my father? I couldn’t leave him behind; he’s only got me to work for him.”
“Very well, then; you must put on your paper ‘Yes,’ and your name, and then say, ‘I must take my family with me—that is, my dad,’ and I bet something will be done for you.”
“What’ll you bet, Jack? There ain’t got to be no gambling down there, you know.”
“And a jolly good job, too,” said a young man who had heard the last remark. “I lost a pretty penny on yesterday’s horse, and where the money is to come from to pay up I don’t know. I expect we shall be fools if we don’t take this offer.”
This opinion was decidedly in the majority. And, indeed, the more the matter was talked over and commented upon the more attractive did it become. And, as may be imagined, there was a vast amount of talk during the rest of the day and the Sunday. Paradise Grove was a most lively place for once, and nobody wanted to be in his or her own house, but everybody wanted a chat with the neighbours. Some of the remarks were doleful enough, for most of the women of Paradise Grove took a dislike to Mr. Knight’s idea, and it is doubtful whether, but for the efforts of “the Basket Woman,” they would have agreed to it. But she spent the whole of that Saturday with them, and by her cheery congratulations and hopeful words heartened everybody up. The poor things, who had known nothing but grinding poverty all their lives, shrank from the strangeness into which they were going, and believed beforehand that they were certain to be, as one girl expressed it, “deadly dull.” They did not want life to become strenuous. There was no ambition in them. They would rather be as they were—in the old familiar places, within reach of a gin-shop, and where they might be lazy and untidy to their heart’s content, and be free to do as they liked—than nerve themselves up to this new life. They did not want to be better off, they said, they were satisfied as they were, if people would only mind their own business and leave them alone.
Their friend laughed at them, and drew the picture of their future in glowing colours. She was not surprised at the apathy of the poor; the rich are apathetic, too, with less than half the reason. The dwellers in Paradise Grove were what they were because of generations of neglect and suffering. It was not their fault that they had no ambition, and no hope, and she pitied and did not blame them. But she had made up her mind that Paradise Grove should be left comfortably vacant, and that the little company she had taken into her care, and put down safely into her very heart, should enjoy to the full the good things that had been offered.
“Are you going down there, Basket Woman?”
“Of course I am. I should not like to be out of that. Besides, I shall want to know how you will be getting on. And you will want me just as much there as here.”