Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/178

168 "Not a branch shall be broken, not a stone turned to let a ragged crowd of beggars upon the land. You talk like a fool!"

"I shall not do what you would not wish, mother; but come some way with me. We are not people to spend the money that has been unspent and growing for three generations. Our people were never reckless nor fond of show; but what good is it lying always idle? I shall only build a hundred cottages over by the river, and save a hundred families from poverty and hunger."

"I hate the people!" Lady Osborne said; "dirty, thieving, ungrateful creatures. Let them wallow in their own mud!"

"It is the fault of circumstances if they have such faults. Oh, mother! we must save them, I want to do so, when I see the men shuffling from beershop to beershop; when I see the women dirty, neglected, loud-voiced—hardly women; when I see the little children shrinking from blows, shouted at, cursed at, taught to see everything wrong, sitting with poverty, playing with sin, cheek to cheek with crime. What can they do, mother? what can they do to become men and women?"