Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/291

Rh "The settlement is satisfactory," replied the lady, looking him steadily in the face, "so far as the people are concerned. Can you not, I implore you to consider, give effect to it without the conditions imposed?"

"Why should I yield all without receiving anything?"

"Because, by your showing, all was given to you on such terms."

"Was it, by Jove!" exclaimed the man, lashing, without moving from his position, at a poppy-head. "Who, I should like to know, devised this scheme for the social redemption of the people, and made this place all it is?"

"My husband," responded the lady, shortly and significantly.

"One who may be your husband, madam," was the reply, "if you are wise, and care for the people as much as you profess."

"That can never be. It is out of the question," was the prompt reply. Then, more persuasively—"Let me, Mr. Elms, as a friend, beg you, as one in whom my husband reposed much confidence, to give these people their rights. Think of the opportunity of doing good that presents itself. Be magnanimous; sign this document to-night, and for ever I will be indebted to you. I will bless your name; and," she urged, "your daughter might come and stay with us in town. We could take her about as the child of a good man who, when he had the power of doing otherwise to his own profit, secured his friends in their lawful possession. John Elms," she continued, with emotion, "think what this threatened eviction means to those poor women and children, to the men who have toiled here so hard and so long! You cannot, you will not, I am sure, cast them out."