The Squire was in raptures. “If we had but a few more such good men in the world, Johnny! I’ll go down at once and shake their hands. If I lived in London, I’d join them.”
I could only laugh. Fancy the Squire going about from house to house with a bag of silver to relieve the needy!
Taking note of the office occupied by these good men, we made our way to it. Only two of them were present that morning: a man who looked like a clerk, for he had books and papers before him; and a thin gentleman in spectacles.
The Squire shook him by the hand at once, breaking into an ovation at the good deeds of the benevolent brotherhood, that should have made the spectacles before us, as belonging to a member of it, blush.
“Yes,” he said, his cool, calm tones contrasting with the Squire’s hot ones, “we intend to effect a work that has never yet been attempted. Why, sir, by our exertions three parts of the complaints of hunger, and what not, will be done away with.”
The Squire folded his hands in an ecstasy of reverence. “That is, you will relieve it,” he remarked. “Bountiful Samaritans!”
“Relieve it, certainly—where the recipients are found to be deserving,” returned the other. “But non-deserving cases—impostors, ill-doers, and the like—will get punishment instead of relief, if we can procure it for them.”
“Quite right, too,” warmly assented the Squire. “Allow me to shake your hand again, sir. And you gentlemen are out every day upon this good work! Visiting from house to house!”
“Some of us are out every day; we devote our time to it.”
“And your money, too, of course!” exclaimed the Squire. “Listen, Johnny Ludlow,” he cried, turning to me, his red face glowing more and more with every word, “I hope you’ll take a lesson from this, my lad! Their time, and their money too!”