'Ay, sir, and, to do them justice, they had need, for the poor's sake, to keep good friends with the squire. How else are they to get a farthing for schools, or coal-subscriptions, or lying-in societies, or lending libraries, or penny clubs? If they spoke their minds to the great ones, sir, how could they keep the parish together?'
'You seem to see both sides of a question, certainly. But what a miserable state of things, that the labouring man should require all these societies, and charities, and helps from the rich!—that an industrious freeman cannot live without alms!'
'So I have thought this long time,' quietly answered Tregarva.
'But Miss Honoria,—she is not afraid to tell her father the truth?'
'Suppose, sir, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, that all the devils had come up and played their fiends' tricks before them,—do you think they'd have seen any shame in it?'
'I really cannot tell,' said Lancelot, smiling.
'Then I can, sir. They'd have seen no more harm in it than there was harm already in themselves; and that was none. A man's eyes can only see what they've learnt to see.'
Lancelot started: it was a favourite dictum of his in Carlyle's works.
'Where did you get that thought, my friend?'
'By seeing, sir.'
'But what has that to do with Miss Honoria?'
'She is an angel of holiness herself, sir; and,
