Leo winked the tear out of his eye, though he was not ashamed of it, as a man all English might have been, and laughed in response to this new appeal, in which he did not know that there might not be a little satire. He said, ‘I see no white wings nor shining robes. I see a very small woman in the dress of a—no, I will not say that—but it’s a little droll, isn’t it? scanty, to say the least, and perhaps shabby.’
‘Oh, if you want an appropriate dress! It ought to be white, with blazons of gold: but it is only an old black merino, worn rusty in the service of the poor. Miss Grey, Mr. Leo Swinford wants you to remember him. He was only a little boy when you saw him last, and he wants to speak to you about the poor.’
‘Of course I should not have known you again,’ said Miss Grey, ‘for I don’t know that I ever saw you nearer than in the carriage with your mamma. But I am very glad to know you, Mr. Swinford, though not much worth the trouble—and especially to tell you anything I can about the poor.’
‘He has views,’ said Lady William, ‘of abolishing them off the face of the earth.’
‘Oh, you’ll never do that,’ said little Miss Grey, with a flash of her beautiful brown eyes. ‘The poor ye have always with you; never, till you can make the race perfect, will you get rid of the poor.’
‘He thinks money will be able to do it: and Mab rather agrees with him.’
‘Money!’ said Miss Grey, with a disdain which no words could express. She turned not to Lady William, who spoke, but to Leo, when she replied, ‘Money is of use, no doubt: but to sow it about and give it to everybody is downright ruin.’
‘Not to good honest old people, Miss Grey, like the Lloyds and old Riverside George.’
‘Pensions?’ said the little lady, with her head on one side like a bird. ‘Well, there may be something in that. Come into my house and sit down, and we can argue it out.’
Miss Grey’s cottage was a smaller cottage even than Lady William’s. It was lopsided—a house with only one window beside the door; one little sitting-room with a little kitchen behind.