"And you know what makes Southern wealth?" I went on.
"Rice - cotton -"
"No, it isn't that," I said.
"What then, my dear? I do not know what you mean. I thought it was mainly cotton."
"It is unpaid labour," I said. "It is hands that ought to work for themselves; and men and women that ought to belong to themselves."
"Slaves," said Miss Cardigan. "But, Daisy, what do you mean?
It's all true; but what can you do?"
"I can have nothing to do with it. And I will have nothing. I would rather be poor, as poor as old Darry and Maria, than take what belongs to them. Miss Cardigan, so would you."
She settled herself back in her chair, like a person who has got a new thought. "My dear child!" she said. And then she said nothing more. I did not wish she should. I wanted no counsel, nor to hear any talk about it. I had only spoken so much, as thinking she had a right to hear it. I went back into my own meditations.
"Daisy, my child," she said suddenly after a while, - "there is only one thing to be said; and the word is not mine. 'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you."
"Why, Miss Cardigan," said I, smiling, "do you think the, world will hate me for such a thing?"