‘Well, at anyrate, I want your assistance very much; will you give it?’
‘With great pleasure, if it is worth anything to you.’
‘It is worth everything; for what harvest I might have on the home-farm—and I understand it promises to be a good one—is likely to be lost unless you help me.’
‘How can that be, Mr Hadleigh?’
‘Through beer. This is how the matter stands. You know the dispute about the wages, and I am willing to give in to that. But on this question of beer in the field I am firm. The men and women shall have the price of it; but I will neither give beer on the field nor permit them to bring it there. A great reform is to be worked in this matter, and I mean to do what little I can to advance it. I am sure, Miss Heathcote, you must acknowledge that I am right in adhering to this resolution.’
‘I have been brought up in some very old-fashioned notions, Mr Hadleigh,’ she answered with pretty evasiveness.
‘There is a high principle at stake in it, my dear Miss Heathcote, and it is worth fighting for.’
‘But I do not yet see how my services are to be of use to you,’ she said, anxious to avoid this debatable subject. It was one on which her uncle had quite different views from those of Mr Hadleigh. And, therefore, she could not altogether sympathise with the latter’s enthusiasm, eager as she was to see the people steady and sober, for she remembered at the moment that he had made a considerable portion of his fortune out of a brewery.
‘That was exactly what I was about to explain,’ he replied. ‘I came to beg you to speak to Caleb Kersey.’
‘Caleb!—why, he never touches anything stronger than tea.’