Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/253

Rh "Not at all," said Lord Lamerton. "I will order that the state apartments be opened on Saturdays—though, Lord knows, above a questionable Van Dyck, there are no great shakes in the way of pictures there. Is that all?"

"That is not all," proceeded Mr. James Welsh. "Lord Lamerton innocently—I will not say, sheepishly—asks, Is that all? No, I reply, and I reply as the mouth-piece of all present, as the shout of the democracy of England. It is not all. It is very far from being all. Is that all? he asks, standing before you, out of whose mouths he has snatched the crust of bread, the staff of life. Is that all? When he closes the manganese mine, and throws almost the entire population of Orleigh out of employ, and scatters them everywhere, hungry, homeless, forlorn."

"Now, this a trifle too extravagant," said Lord Lamerton. "The mine would have gone under my house and brought it down. Why, it would have cost me twenty thousand pounds to rebuild the house."

"You hear that! Twenty thousand pounds which might have been spent in Orleigh is refused the people. Twenty thousand pounds! How many able-bodied men are there in Orleigh? About two hundred. What might you not have done with a hundred pounds each? What comforts might you not have provided yourselves with? But his lordship buttons up his pockets. Look upon yourselves, each of you, as defrauded of a hundred pounds. My lord will bank his twenty thousand. He does not want it. He hoards it. He fossilizes it. There is a fable about a dog in the manger which snarled at the horses that wanted to eat out of that manger which was of no use at all to the hound."

Then Lord Lamerton raised his voice, and said, "My good friends, I don't believe you are so weak as to be gulled by these fallacies. Why should I allow my house to be undermined and rattled down about my ears, if I can help it?"