"I am recovering fast."
"You came to a good place for recovering," said Dillwyn, glancing round the room, and willing, perhaps, to leave the subject.
"Almost too good," said Lois. "It spoils one. You cannot imagine the contrast between what I came from—and this. I have been like one in dreamland. And there comes over me now and then a strange feeling of the inequality of things; almost a sense of wrong; the way I am cared for is so very different from the very best and utmost that could be done for the poor people at Esterbrooke. Think of my soups and creams and ices and oranges and grapes!—and there, very often I could not get a bit of fresh beef to make beef-tea; and what could I do without beef-tea? And what would I not have given for an orange sometimes! I do not mean, for myself. I could get hardly anything the sick people really wanted. And here—it is like rain from the clouds."
"Where does the 'sense of wrong' come in?"
"It seems as if things need not be so unequal."
"And what does your silver spade expect to do there?"
"Don't say that! I have no silver spade. But just so far as I could help to introduce better ways and a knowledge of better things, the inequality would be made up—or on the way to be made up."
"What refining measures are you thinking of?—beside your own presence and example."
"I was certainly not thinking of that. Why, Mr. Dillwyn, knowledge itself is refining; and then, so is comfort; and I could help them to more comfort, in their houses, and in their meals. I began to teach them singing, which has a great effect; and I carried all the pictures I had with me. Most of all, though, to bring them to a knowledge of Bible truth is the principal thing and the surest way. The rest is really in order to that."
"Wasn't it very hard work?"