know--I suppose, a dozen."

"A dozen, I was told, is a fair day's work," Mr. Dillwyn said. "They do
more, but it is by working on into the night."

"Good patience! Twenty-five cents for a hard day's work!" said Mrs.
Wishart. "A dollar and a half a week! Where is bread to come from, to
keep them alive to do it?"

"Better die at once, I should say," echoed Madge.

"Many a one would be glad of that alternative, I doubt not," Mr.
Dillwyn went on. "But there is perhaps an old mother to be taken care
of, or a child or two to feed and bring up."

"Don't talk about it!" said Mrs. Wishart. "It makes me feel blue."

"I must risk that. I want you to think about it. Where is help to come
from? These are the people I was thinking of, when I asked you what was
to be done with our poor."

"I don't know why you ask me. _I_ can do nothing. It is not my
business."

"Will it do to assume that as quite certain?"

"Why yes. What can I do with a set of master tailors?"

"You can cry down the cheap shops; and say why."

"Are the dear shops any better?"

Mr. Dillwyn laughed. "Presumably! But talking--even your talking--will
not do all. I want you to think about it."

"I don't want to think about it," answered the lady. "It's beyond _me_.
Poverty is people's own fault. Industrious and honest people can always
get along."

"If sickness does not set in, or some father, or husband, or son does
not take to bad ways."

"How can I help all that?" asked the lady somewhat pettishly. "I never
knew you were in the benevolent and reformatory line before, Mr.
Dillwyn. What has put all this in your head?"

"Those scarfs, for one thing. Another thing was a visit I had lately
occasion to make. It was near midday. I found a room as bare as a room
could be, of all that we call comfort; in the floor a small pine table
set with three plates, bread, cold herrings, and cheese. That was the
dinner for a little boy, whom I found setting the table, and his father
and mother. The parents work in a factory hard by, from early to late;
they have had sickness in the family this autumn, and are too poor to
afford a fire to eat their dinner by, or to make it warm, so the other
child, a little girl, has been sent away for the winter. It was
frostily cold the day I was there. The boy goes to school in the
afternoon, and comes home in time to light up a fire for his father and
mother to warm themselves by at evening. And the mother has all her
housework t