Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/259

 in the world and a philanthropist. Well, then, where's Slingsby, if that's philanthropy? So Mr. Churchill comes along and says, in a manner of speaking, "That's all very well, but this same Mr. Mersch is the grand duke of somewhere or other, and we must bolster him up in his kingdom, or else there will be trouble with the powers." Powers—what's powers to me?—or Greenland? when there's Slingsby, a man I've smoked a pipe with every market evening of my life, in the workhouse? And there's hundreds of Slingsbys all over the country.'

"The man was working himself—Slingsby was a good sort of man. It shocked even me. One knows what goes on in one's own village, of course. And it's only too true that there's hundreds of Slingsbys—I'm not boring you, am I?"

I did not answer for a moment. "I—I had no idea," I said; "I have been so long out of it and over there one did not realise the . . . the feeling."

"You've been well out of it," she answered; "one has had to suffer, I assure you." I believed that she had had to suffer; it must have taken