Her pale cheeks flushed.
"We are too poor, my lord, to keep a servant. I take care of my own children, and do the work of the house. Henry is too young to be entrusted with the charge of so many little ones during my absence at school, and my mind would be so full of anxiety about them, that I could not attend to my scholars as I could wish. I hope you will take these unfortunate circumstances as a sufficient apology for my declining the situation."
"We are all called upon to make sacrifices for the good of our fellow-creatures, Mrs. Martin, but we must not do so at the expense of more sacred duties. I should be sorry to lay upon you, my dear madam, a burthen greater than the one you have already to bear. Now listen to what I have to propose, and I think we can arrange the matter to our mutual satisfaction. Mr. Conyers, the vicar, allows your husband eighty pounds a year for his ministerial services. A small remuneration for a well-educated man, and a good preacher, who has to support a large family and pay rent for the cottage in which he resides.
"The vicar draws from the parish an income of fifteen hundred per annum, and could afford to give more. I now propose to allow you one hundred a year for taking charge of my school. Will you accept my terms, and by so doing confer upon me a great obligation?"
Mrs. Martin burst into tears. "Oh, my lord, it would make our desert blossom as the rose, and give the poor children bread and meat, where they now only get a scanty supply of bread and milk. In our daily prayers, we shall not forget to ask our Heavenly Father to bless you for your munificence."
"I am not quite so disinterested and benevolent as you think me," returned the lord of the manor, deeply moved by her tears, for Mrs. Martin was the last person in the world from whom he would have expected such a display of feeling.
"This school is a pet scheme of mine. I do not like to be disappointed. The miserable ignorance of the peasantry is a disgrace to the landed gentry, and loudly calls for reform. I want to lend a hand in washing out this foul national blot, and the co-operation of the clergy and their wives must be obtained, to do this in a proper Christian spirit. Their example will provoke to emulation the wives and daughters of the wealthy yeomanry; and after a few weeks you will find that we shall have plenty of pupils and teachers to assist in the good work."
Lord Wilton spoke with enthusiasm, for the subject was very near his heart. Mrs. Martin who knew the poorer classes better than he did, and their decided aversion to book learning, looked rather incredulous. This was not the only difficulty to be overcome. The prejudice that existed in the minds of the agricultural employers to their servants being taught, was yet stronger than the indifference and apathy manifested by the poor people themselves.
"My lord, you have a harder battle to fight than you imagine. The farmers prefer human machines to work for them, to rational thinking men and women. They tell me it is none of your business to instruct the poor. God made them so, and it is better for you to leave them as you find them. They don't want their servants to know as much as they do themselves."
"They prefer slaves to freemen," suggested Lord Wilton. "It is strange how deeply that accursed system is implanted in the human heart. We need not go to the West Indies, or to the slave states of America, to see how it degrades the mind, and reduces man to the level of the brute. I hope the day is not far distant when both countries will abolish for ever this disgraceful traffic."