“Yes, I saw him yesterday,” replied the doctor, “just after the accident happened, and I am anxious about him. I fear, though I am not quite certain, that his eyesight is destroyed.”
“Dear! dear!—oh, poor man,” said Mrs Donnithorne, whose sympathetic heart swelled, while her blue eyes instantly filled with tears. “It is so very sad, Oliver, for his delicate wife and four young children are entirely dependent upon him and his two sons—and they found it difficult enough to make the two ends meet, even when they were all in health; for it is hard times among the miners at present, as you know, Oliver; and now—dear, dear, it is very, very sad.”
Little Mrs Donnithorne said nothing more at that time, but her mind instantly reverted to a portly basket which she was much in the habit of carrying with her on her frequent visits to the poor and the sick—for the good lady was one of those whose inclinations as well as principles lead them to “consider the poor.”
It must not be imagined, however, that the poor formed a large class of the community in St. Just. The miners of that district, and indeed all over Cornwall, were, and still are, a self-reliant, independent, hard-working race, and as long as tough thews and sinews, and stout and willing hearts, could accomplish anything, they never failed to wrench a subsistence out of the stubborn rocks which contain the wealth of the land. Begging goes very much against the grain of a Cornishman, and the lowest depth to which he can sink socially, in his own esteem, is that of being dependent on charity.
In some cases this sentiment is carried too far, and has degenerated into pride; for, when God in His wisdom sees fit, by means of disabling accident or declining health, to incapacitate a man from labour, it is as honourable in him to receive charity as it is (although not always sufficiently esteemed so) a high privilege and luxury of the more fortunate to give.
Worthy Mrs Donnithorne’s charities were always bestowed with such delicacy that she managed, in some mysterious way, to make the recipients feel as though they had done her a favour in accepting them. And yet she was not a soft piece of indiscriminating amiability, whose chief delight in giving lay in the sensations which the act created within her own breast. By no means. None knew better than she when and where to give money, and when to give blankets, bread, or tea. She was equally sharp to perceive the spirit that rendered it advisable for her to say, “I want you to do me a favour—there’s a good woman now, you won’t refuse me, etcetera,” and to detect the spirit that called forth the sharp remark, accompanied with a dubious smile and a shake of her fat forefinger, “There now, see that you make better use of it this time, else I shall have to scold you.”
Having received a message for poor Mrs Batten, the miner’s wife, the doctor left the cottage, and proceeded to pay his visits. Let us accompany him.