Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/498

68 still larger. " The colony, madam, is not ruined; never was ruined, never can be ruined. The people are ruined, a good lot of them; but the colony is a good and grand colony. God made the colony, and let me tell you, madam ," looking very serious, "Providence is no speculator, up to-day, down to-morrow. What he does he does. Well, the people have ruined themselves; but it is out of their power to ruin the colony; no, nor the town. The town and the colony are sound as a bell, never were sounder, never had more stuff in the; never had so much. There is the land still, not a yard of it is gone ; no great fellow has put that on his back and gone off with it. The land is there, and the houses, and the merchandise, and the flocks, and herds, and horses; and—what concerns you—"

He sat and looked at Mrs. Tattenhall, who stood there intently listening, and Uriah stood just behind her listening too, and all the children with their mouths open, gazing on the strange man.

"Well, what—what concerns us?" said Mrs. Tattenhall.

"To get a huge, almighty heap of something for nothing," said the large man, stretching out his arms in a circular shape, as if he would inclose a whole globe, and in a low, slow, deep tone, calculated to sink deep into the imaginations of the listeners.

"If we did but know when things would mend;" said my brother Uriah, for the first time venturing to put in a word.

"When!" said Robinson, starting up so suddenly that his head struck against a beam in the low, one-storied house. "Confound these low places," said he, turning fiery red, and rubbing his crown, "there will be better anon. When? say ye? Hark ye? this colony is—how old? Eight years! and in eight years what a town! what wealth! what buildings ! what a power of sheep and cattle! The place is knocked down, won't it get up again? Ay, and quickly! Here are a pair of sturdy legs," he said, turning to Bob, who flushed up in surprise; "but, Mrs. Tattenhall, you did not teach him to walk without a few tumbles, eh? But he got up again, and how he stands now! what a sturdy young rogue it is! And what made him get up again? Because he was