“Most of all, I think a man likes to spend his evenings in an armchair in a warm, well-lighted room, with a pipe in his mouth, something to drink at his elbow, and a newspaper in his hand.”
“If they could but do without the pipe! But I suppose that would be too great a sacrifice. And it is no use to try to ‘wind them up too high for mortal man beneath the sky’; we must take them as they are. Old Benham once said to me, ‘I ham as I ham, and I can’t be no hammer!’ There is a profound truth in that remark, don’t you think so, Margaret? But I am glad we have made up our minds to do something for our brothers and sisters. The inequalities of life have often made me bitter.”
“And how must poor women have felt who have struggled to bring up respectably a family of children on the money that it has cost us for dress!”
The “At Home” was a great success. Two better persons to manage it could not have been found than Margaret and Tom. They had the rare gift of always being natural. Many a philanthropic endeavour fails because the ladies and gentlemen, though striving to do their best, and longing to be useful, cannot feel perfectly at home among the poor, and make them feel the same. The latter often mistake the stiffness, which is more the result of nervousness than anything else, for patronage and condescension, and they are very quick to resent anything of that kind. It was greatly because Margaret and Tom were already respected and beloved that their invitation was so almost universally accepted. They had some fun, both with the men and the women.
“Christmas comes early this year, Miss Tom, don’t it?” one asked, with a wink at the men who sat opposite to him.
“Does it, Nelson? I think it is about the same time as usual. My almanack declares it to be on the 25th of December, as it was last year, if you remember rightly.”
“Oh! I thought tea-fights and such things only comed at Christmas. What’s all this mean, miss? Are religious people more religious than usual, or what?”
“It only means that they are more friendly than usual.”
“They want to get us, don’t they?” The man’s eyes were twinkling; but Tom answered quite seriously, “Yes, Nelson, they want very much indeed to get you.”
“And they are willing to bid for us in tea-fights, and coffee, and even fires and newspapers?”