Living out here in the country as we do, I see a great many poor people, either coming here to beg, tramping by on the high road, or sitting on the rustic benches that master has had placed all along the sidewalks that bound his property.
I am amazed at the topsy-turviness of their ideas. Now, rich people are not perfect, but on the whole, they seem to have more common sense than the idle poor. These shabbily dressed persons perch round on the benches, stare at master’s big white house showing among the trees, and these are their sentiments: “I wish I had been born rich—I wish some one would die, and leave me some money—I wish I didn’t have to work”—one man only, in the whole course of my eavesdropping under hedges, have I heard say, “That’s a wise guy in that big house. He’s slaved for what he got. Let him keep it.”
However, this kind of lazy talk does not affect master and Mr. Bonstone. I have heard them say again and again, that there are frightful inequalities in the human lot, that every man does not get a living wage, and there should be more brotherhood and sympathy between class and class. Perhaps that is why they never get disgusted or offended or suspicious. Some of the rich people about here say that they are bothered to death with squealing, envious poor persons, who hang round them, begging for money for this scheme and that scheme, which has always at bottom the everlasting endeavour to get something for nothing.
Master and Mr. Bonstone smile, and never worry, nor argue, nor fuss—they just keep on helping everybody that applies to them.
One day, the first summer we came out here, I was up on the balcony outside master’s bed-room with him. He had come home from the city very hot and tired, and he was having a lovely time lounging in a big chair with a glass of lemonade at his elbow.
The parlour-maid came up and said that a young man wished to see him.
Master got up patiently, put on his coat, and went down-stairs with me at his heels.
An unprepossessing looking young fellow awaited him in the hall. He had a loose mouth, and he talked out of one side of it, and his jaw was undershot and one-sided, like that of a badly put together dog.
Master sat down on the monks’ bench beside him. “What can I do for you, sir?”
The lad twisted his rag of a cap in his hands. “I thought you might give me some money.”