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Well, this at least was a state of affairs that could be remedied.

He found on reaching home that his stepmother was not in the parlor, and, being ready for his tea, he made his way to the big kitchen, where he found her in company with his tenants of the Little Farm. Bess, wearing a businesslike white apron and a sun-bonnet poised with bewitching effect upon her curls, with sleeves rolled up on two plump arms, always white, and now whiter than ever with flour, seemed busily at work. In a corner by the fire sat Kitty, pensively gazing into the glowing coals.

"I've got company, ye see, Stephen," cried Rebecca joyfully.

"Not company," said Bess, raising her eyes demurely from the dough she was diligently kneading, "help." "To be sure, to be sure," laughed Rebecca. "I'm havin' help, Stephen, my dear. Miss Bess, here, she be come to give I a hand wi' the bread, and tomorrow I be a-goin' to learn her to skim cream."

"I'm tired of leading an empty life," explained Bess; "I've made up my mind to be useful."

Stephen stood for a moment flicking at his splashed boot with his huntingcrop; there was a smile upon his face, which, however, presently vanished as he glanced at Kitty. The latter had not spoken, nor, after the first nod of greeting, moved.

"You have no taste for such work, I see, Miss Leslie," he said.

The harshness so often noticeable in his tone when he spoke to her was very perceptible now. This dainty lady was evidently too proud even to emulate her sister's playful pretence. Kitty looked up with that mixture of appeal and resentment with which she had once before responded to a similar indictment; but made no reply.

Mrs. Hardy hastened to take up the cudgels on her behalf.

"I'd 'low ye bain't so very well today, be you, missy? There, you've scarce spoke a word since ye did come in, though Miss Bess here can make her little tongue wag a bit."

"Ah," said Bess, glancing up innocently from beneath her sunbonnet, "that's the worst of me I'm such a chatterbox-I know I am. You see, when I get with kind people like you I can't help feeling light-hearted again. It's such a contrast to our dreadful silent house down there. Everything's so cheerful in this place, I can't help feeling cheerful too."

"Well, my dear, an' I'm sure 'tis right you should feel cheerful at your age. "Twould be downright onnat'ral if you didn't. There, sure it do my heart good to hear ye. I could wish to see sister a bit more livelylike too. I'm sorry to hear you do

feel it so lonesome at the Little Farm. It must be a sad change to what you're used to of course-sure it must be."

Stephen's face softened, and he came a step or two forward into the room. "You were saying this morning that you'd like to ride again," he said to Bess. "That pony of mine that goes with one of the milk-carts would carry you nicely. He's a pretty-shaped, clean-legged little beast if you come to look at him, and the mare I ride about the place would suit Miss Leslie very well, I think, if she was willing to try her."

Kitty half rose from her chair; her cheeks were flaming, her lips parted, but, before the words which she had begun to stammer could convey their meaning, Bess struck in with shrill and decided tones.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Hardythank you a thousand times! It will be lovely-too delightful for words! We accept with rapture!"

"Bess," interposed Kitty, raising her voice in turn, "I don't see how we can.

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"If Bess rides I will ride too," said Kitty. "Where you go I go, Bess," she added, turning upon her sister with a sternness which she had never hitherto shown before the Hardys.

"Well, well, the more the merrier," said Rebecca, gazing from one to the other with a mystified air. "I'm sure ye needn't trouble much about habits, miss; there'll be no one to see you but the crows. I wouldn't go out on the road for a bit till ye get more used to ridin'; any old skirt 'ull do then."

"There's a saddle here which belonged to my mother," said Stephen; "I will hunt it up, and I can borrow another."

"Thank you very much," said Kitty, constrainedly; "it is very good of you to take so much trouble."

"And you'll come with us, won't you, Mr. Hardy?" said Bess. "You'll come just to see we don't fall off or anything."

"It might be safer at first," responded the farmer. "I'll try and get everything ready for three o'clock to-morrow -I shan't be busy then."

But he was destined to see the sisters before the stated hour. Quite early, The Times.

before daylight in fact, he observed the pair crossing the yard towards the milk-house, Bess skipping along in front and Kitty following more slowly.

"What do the young ladies want at this time of the morning?" he inquired, rising from the table where he had just finished breakfast.

"Dear, to be sure," responded Rebecca, "I'd clean forgotten I'd promised to teach the little one how to make up the butter. I did tell the maids to keep a bit back on purpose for her. 1 did think 'twould be a pity to drag her out of her bed any earlier."

"Is Miss Leslie going to learn to make butter, too?" inquired Stephen.

"I fancy not. She do seem to ha' got summat on her mind, poor dear. There she do scarce open her lips, but she do follow sister about same as a dog mid do. Well, it mid seem a funny thing to you, Stephen, but for all she be so stand-off by times, I do seem to have more of a likin' for she nor what I do feel for the little 'un."

Stephen made no answer, and his stepmother glanced round at him. "She be too stuck-up for your taste, I d' 'low."

"She is nothing to me one way or another," returned Stephen, and he went out, banging the door behind him.

Mrs. Hardy uttered an ejaculation of surprise, for Stephen seldom showed temper, and the occasion did not seem to her to call for it. But presently, like the philosophical woman she was, she joined the sisters in the dairy without further troubling herself about the matter.

(To be continued.)

FROM A POOR MAN'S HOUSE.

V

Chilliness-an emotional and social chilliness that can with difficulty be defined or nailed down to any causeis, above and below all, what one feels in returning from a poor man's house into middle-class surroundings. It is not unlike that chill with which certain forms of metropolitan hospitality strike a countryman. He meets a London friend, a former fellow-townsman, perhaps, who has migrated to London and whom he has not seen for a year or two. "Glad to see you," says the Londoner. "You must call on my wife before you go back. Her day is Wednesday." Or, "You must come to dinner one evening. When are you free? Next Tuesday? or Friday?" If the hospitality had begun forthwith, and the countryman had been haled off, country fashion, to the very next potluck meal, he would have had a pleasant adventure. It would have been like old times. The old glow of friendship would have more than revived. But the calculated invitation for a future date, the idea that the countryman will like to call for a twenty minutes' chat on generalities and a couple of cups of bad afternoon tea. Though he may understand that the multiplicity of engagements in London renders this sort of thing convenient, he none the less feels a chill when it is applied to himself, and usually cares little whether he go or not. He becomes conscious of the desire to save trouble, which is at the bottom of such calculations. Had the Londoner revisited the country he would have found old friends ready to upset all their arrangements for the sake of entertaining him. The London hospitality is the "better done," but country hospitality is warmer. Middle-class life runs smoother than the

poor man's: it is more arranged, and in many ways "better done," and it is chillier precisely because, for smooth running, the warmer human impulses, both good and bad, must be repressed. "Something with a little love and a little murder" was what the untaught old woman wanted to learn to read. It is what we all want in our hearts, much more than smooth running and impenetrable uniform politeness.

Down at Seacombe we warm our hands, so to speak, at the fire of life; hunger lurks outside, and the fire is dusty and needs looking after; but it glows, and we sit together round it. Here, in Salisbury, throughout the social house, we have an installation of hot-water pipes; they may be hygienic (which is doubtful), and they are little trouble to keep going; but they don't glow. Give me the warmth that glows, and let me get near the heart of it.

Voices are often raised in Under Town and quarrels are not infrequent, but the underlying affections are seldom doubted, and when they do rise to the surface, there they are, visible, unashamed. "Each for himself, and devil take the hindmost" is more admired in theory than followed in practice. "Each for himself and the Almighty for us all" is Tony's way of putting it. The difference lies there. My acquaintances here are well off for the necessities of life. No one is likely to starve next week. Nevertheless they are full of worry, and by restraining their expressions of worry so as not to become intolerable to the other worriers, they do but make themselves the more lonely and increase their panic of mind. They are afraid of life.

At Seacombe, though there was not a fortnight's money in the house, we lived merrily on what we had. In Tony's "Summut'll sure to turn up if

yu be ready and tries to oblige," there is more than philosophy; there is race tradition, the experience of generations. The Fates are treacherous, therefore, of course, they like to be trusted, and the gifts they reserve for those that trust them are retrospective.

All of us at Tony's wanted many things-a pension, enough to live on. work, a piano, or only "jam side plaate"-God knows what we didn't want! But the things that men haven't got, and want, unite them more than those they have. I want is life's steam gauge, the measure of its energy. is the ground-bass of love, however transcendentalized, and whether it give birth to children or ideas. I have is stagnant. And I am afraid is the beginning of decay.

It

It is still I want, rather than I am afraid, that spurs the poor man on.

VI.

For his first marriage, and towards setting up house, Tony suceeded in saving twenty shillings. He gave it to his mother in gold to keep safely for him, and the day before the wedding he asked for it. "Yu knows we an't got no bloody sovereigns," said his father. It had all been spent in food and clothes for the younger children. So Tony went to sea that night and earned five shillings. A shilling of that too he gave his mother; then started off on foot for the village where his girl was living and waiting him. She had a little saved up; he knew that, though he feared it might have gone like his. They were married however; they fed, rejoiced and joked; and, "for to du the thing proper like," they hired a trap to drive them home. With what money was left they embarked on married life, and their children made no unreasonable delay about coming. "Aye!" says Tony, “I'd du the same again-though 'twas hard times often."

If

Before I left Seacombe I asked a fisherman's wife, who was expecting her sixth or seventh child, whether she bad enough money in hand to go through with it all; for I knew that her husband was unlikely to earn anything just then. "I have," she said, "an' p'raps I an't. It all depends. everything goes all right, I've got enough to last out, but if I be so ill as I was wi' the last one, what us lost, then I an't. Howsbe-ever, I don't want nort now. Us'll see how it turns out." She went on setting her house in order, preparing baby linen and making ready to "go up over," with perfect courage and tranquility. When one thinks of the average educated woman's fear of childbed, although she can have doctors, nurses, anæsthetics and every other alleviation, the contrast is very great, more especially as the fisherman's wife had good reason to anticipate much pain and danger and household trouble in addition to the possibility of her money giving out.

Those are not extraordinary instances, chosen to show how courageous people can be sometimes; on the contrary, they are quite ordinary illustrations of a general attitude among the poor towards life. To express it in terms of a theory which in one form or another is accepted by nearly all thinkers-the poor have not only the Will to Live, they have the Courage to Live.

On the whole, they possess the Courage to Live much more than any other class. And they need it much more. The industrious middle-class man, the commercial or professional man, works with a reasonable expectation of ending his days in comfort. He would hardly work without. But the poor man's reasonable expectation is the workhouse, or some almost equally galling kind of dependency. The former may count himself very unlucky if after a life of work he comes

to destitution; the latter is lucky if he escapes it. Yet the poor man works on, and is of at least as good cheer as the other one. If he can rub along he is even happy. He is, I believe, the happier of the two.

The more intimately one lives among the poor, the more one admires their amazing talent for happiness in spite of privation, and their magnificent courage in the face of uncertainty; and the more also one sees that these qualities have been called into being, and kept alive, by uncertainty and thriftlessness. Thrift, indeed, may easily be an evil rather than good. From a middle-class standpoint it is an admirable virtue to recommend to the poor. It tends to keep them off the rates. But for its proper exercise thrift requires a special training and tradition. And from the standpoint of the essential, as opposed to the material, welfare of the poor it can easily be over-valued. Extreme thrift, like extreme cleanliness, has often a singularly dehumanizing effect. It hardens the nature of its votaries, just as gaining what they have not earned most frequently makes men flabby. Thrift, as highly recommended, leads the poor man into the spiritual squalor of the lower middle class. It is all right as a means of living, but lamentable as an end of life. If a penny saved is a penny earned, then a penny truly earned is worth twopence.

The Courage to Live is the blossom of the Will to Live-a flower far less readily grown than withered. It might be argued that since apprehensiveness implies foresight, the poor man's Courage to Live is simply his lack of forethought. In part, no doubt, it is that. But he does think, slowly and tenaciously, as a cuttle-fish grips. He foresees pretty plainly the workhouse; and he has the courage to face its probability, and to go ahead nevertheless. His reading of life is in some ways

very broad, his foothold very firm; for they are founded closely on actual experience of the more primary realities. He looks backwards as well as forwards; his fondness and memory for anecdote is evidence of how he dwells on the past; instead of comparing some occurrence with something in a book he recalls a similar thing that happened to so-and-so, so many years ago, you mind. . . . He knows vaguely (and it is our vaguer knowledge which shapes our lives) that only by a succession of miracles, a long series of hair's-breadth escapes and lucky chances, does he stand at any moment where he is; and he doesn't see why miracles should suddenly come to an end. Hence his active fatalism, as opposed to the passive Eastern variety. In Tony's opinion, "Tis better to be lucky than rich." I have never heard him say that fortune favors the brave. He assumes

it.

64

VII

As one grows more democratic in feeling, as one's faith in the people receives shock after shock, yet on the whole brightens-so does one's mistrust of the so-called democratic programmes increase. One becomes at once more dissatisfied and less, more reckless and much more cautious. One sees so plainly that the three or four political parties by no means exhaust the political possibilities. The poor, though indeed they have the franchise, remain little more than pawns in the political game. They have to vote for somebody, and nobody is prepared to allow them much without a full return in money or domination. They pay in practice for what theoretically is only their due. Justice for them is mainly bills of costs. The political fight lies still between their masters and wouldbe masters; not so much now, perhaps, between different factions of property

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