He was one of those people who sit very high, and he now seemed taller and more impressive than when he stood.
“It is certainly a very good object,” Annie resumed; and she went on to explain it at second-hand from Mr. Brandreth as well as she could. The little girl was standing in her lap, and got between her and Mr. Peck, so that she had to look first around one side of her and then another to see how he was taking it.
He nodded his head, and said gravely, “Yes,” and “Yes,” and “Yes,” at each significant point of her statement. At the end he asked: “And are the means forthcoming? Have they raised the money for renting and furnishing the rooms?”
“Well, no, they haven't yet, or not quite, as I understand.”
“Have they tried to interest the working people themselves in it? If they are to value its benefits, it ought to cost them something—self-denial, privation even.”
“Yes, I know,” Annie began.
“I'm not satisfied,” the minister pursued, “that it is wise to provide people with even harmless amusements that take them much away from their homes. These things are invented by well-to-do people who have no occupation, and think that others want pastimes as much as themselves. But what working people want is rest, and what they need are decent homes where they can take it. Besides, unless they help to support this union out of their own means, the better sort among them will feel wounded by its existence, as a sort of superfluous charity.”
“Yes, I see,” said Annie. She saw this side of the affair with surprise. The minister seemed to have thought more about such matters than she had, and she insensibly receded from her first hasty generalisation of him, and paused to reapproach him on another level. The little girl began to play with her glasses, and accidentally knocked them from her nose. The minister's face and figure became a blur, and in the purblindness to which she was reduced she had a moment of clouded volition in which she was tempted to renounce, and even oppose, the scheme for a Social Union, in spite of her promise to Mr. Brandreth. But she remembered that she was a consistent and faithful person, and she said: “The ladies have a plan for raising the money, and they've applied to me to second it—to use my influence somehow among the villagers to get them interested; and the working people can help too if they choose. But I'm quite a stranger amongst those I'm expected to influence, and I don't at all know how they will take it.” The minister listened, neither prompting nor interrupting. “The ladies' plan is to have an entertainment at one of the cottages, and charge an admission, and devote the proceeds to the union.” She paused. Mr. Peck still remained silent, but she knew he was attentive. She pushed on. “They intend to have a—a representation, in the open air, of one of Shakespeare's plays, or scenes from one—”
“Do you wish me,” interrupted the minister, “to promote the establishment of this union? Is that why you speak to me of it?”
“Why, I don't know why I speak to you of it,” she replied with a laugh of embarrassment, to which he was cold, apparently. “I certainly couldn't ask you to take part in an affair that you didn't approve.”