Tom glanced at her cousin as she uttered the last name, and saw that his countenance brightened.
“How is Miss Miller, Tom? Are you as good friends as ever?”
“Yes, we are good friends, and Margaret is very well. Which are the flowers whose names you have forgotten?”
“I am afraid we have passed them. Let us go back and look for them. I hope Alfred Greenholme is not as a man what he was as a boy, or Miss Wythburn is little to be congratulated.”
“She does not congratulate herself. In fact, I know that she is wretched. There is nothing very tangible against Mr. Greenholme. He is a lazy, self-pleasing, good-natured man; but girls of these days—some of them, at all events—want more than that. Mary Wythburn is a very clever girl, and far-seeing, too. She denounces such people as Mr. Greenholme. Like Mrs. Booth, she gets into a furious mood when she sees hosts of poor wretches starving, because they cannot get remunerative work to do, while men and women in good circumstances—professing Christianity, too—seem to have not a thought in life excepting that which touches their own pleasure. She thinks that if we are real Christians we cannot, and ought not, to be happy while so many are miserable, and I agree with her.”
“I often think the same. But she ought not to marry Greenholme if she feels like that. And the invitations are out?”
“Yes; so I suppose the wedding will take place. But I shall not quite believe it until I see her married. John, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of the best people in England who are absolutely weary of things as they are; and they are growing determined to change them, too. You have come home in time to help. We only want one or two men of genius and grace to show us the way. I believe the way is not through the giving of alms, for the money given to the poor every winter is enormous—besides special magnificent gifts for special purposes—and yet things are little better for it all.”
“Tom, have you been surreptitiously in correspondence with my old comrade, Arthur Knight?”
“Who and what is Arthur Knight? He has a good name.”
“Has he not? And he is a true knight, too—a splendid fellow, and great on this subject. He says things need not be another year as they are; and declares that it only requires a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether to accomplish such a revolution as shall crown England with truer glory than she has ever known before.”