Looking again keenly at the speaker, Betty was sure that the eyes, which did not meet hers, were soft with moisture.
'What did you do for that man?'
'I sent him to the seaside for three weeks. He came back perfectly well. But then his employers would not take him on again; they said they wanted younger men; so I had to find new work for him.'
'There was another old woman you told me of in that dreadful court; what did you do for her?'
'Put her in clover,' said Pitt, smiling. 'I moved Hutchins and his family into a better lodging, where they could have a room to spare; and then I paid Mrs. Hutchins to take care of her.'
'You might go on, for aught I see, and spend your whole life, and all you have, in this sort of work.'
'Do you think it would be a disagreeable disposition to make of both?'
'Why, yes!' said Betty. 'Would you give up all your tastes and pursuits,—literary, and artistic, and antiquarian, and I don't know what all,—and be a mere walking Benevolent Society?'
'No need to give them up, any further than as they would interfere with something more important and more enjoyable.'
'More enjoyable!'