as we _poor_ people." Yet even
there, if the emotion was newly-kindled, the sentiment was too
antiquated to mean much. For it is a very ancient idea--that of getting
even with one's enemies in the next world instead of in this. So long as
the poor can console themselves by leaving it to Providence to avenge
them at the Day of Judgment, it cannot be said that there is any
virulent class-feeling amongst them. The most that you can make of it is
that they occasionally feel spiteful. It happened, in this case, to be
against rich people that those two women felt their momentary grudge;
but it was hardly felt against the rich as a class; and if the same kind
of offence had come from some neighbour, they would have said much the
same kind of thing. In the family disputes which occur now and then over
the inheritance of a few pounds' worth of property, the losers put on a
very disinterested and superior look, and say piously of the gainers:
"Ah, they'll never prosper! They _can't_ prosper!"

The exceptional case alluded to above was certainly startling. I was
talking to an old man whom I had long known: a little wrinkled old man,
deservedly esteemed for his integrity and industry, full of experience
as well as of old-world notions sometimes a little "grumpy," a little
caustic in his manner of talking, but on the whole quite kindly and
tolerant in his disposition. You could often watch in his face the
habitual practice of patience, as, with a wry smile and a contemptuous
remark, he dismissed some disagreeable topic or other from his thoughts.
He had come down in the world. His father's cottage, already mortgaged
when he inherited it, had been sold over his head after the death of the
mortgagee, so that thenceforth he was on no better footing than any
other of the labourers. Gradually, as the demand failed for his
old-fashioned forms of skill--thatching, mowing, and so on--his position
became more and more precarious; yet he remained good-tempered, in his
queer acid way, until he was past seventy years old. That evening, when
he startled me, he had been telling of his day's work as a road-mender,
and he was mightily philosophical over the prospect of having to give up
even that last form of regular employment, because of the exposure and
the miles of walking which it entailed. Nobody could have thought him a
vindictive or even a discontented man so far. By chance, however,
something was said about the uncultivated land in the neig