for the poor, my good fellow? And what do they want?
Have they not houses, work, a church, and schools,--and poor-rates
to fall back on?'

The keeper smiled sadly.

'To fall back on, indeed! and down on, too. At all events, you rich
might help to make Christians of them, and men of them. For I'm
beginning to fancy strangely, in spite of all the preachers say,
that, before ever you can make them Christians, you must make them
men and women.'

'Are they not so already?'

'Oh, sir, go and see! How can a man be a man in those crowded
styes, sleeping packed together like Irish pigs in a steamer, never
out of the fear of want, never knowing any higher amusement than the
beer-shop? Those old Greeks and Romans, as I read, were more like
men than half our English labourers. Go and see! Ask that sweet
heavenly angel, Miss Honoria,'--and the keeper again blushed,--'And
she, too, will tell you. I think sometimes if she had been born and
bred like her father's tenants' daughters, to sleep where they
sleep, and hear the talk they hear, and see the things they see,
what would she have been now? We mustn't think of it.' And the
keeper turned his head away, and fairly burst into tears.

Lancelot was moved.

'Are the poor very immoral, then?'

'You ask the rector, sir, how many children hereabouts are born
within six months of the wedding-day. None of them marry, sir, till
the devil forces them. There's no sadder sight than a labourer's
wedding now-a-days. You never see the parents come with them. They
just get another couple, that are keeping company, like themselves,
and come sneaking into church, looking all over as if they were
ashamed of it--and well they may be!'

'Is it possible?'

'I say, sir, that God makes you gentlemen, gentlemen, that you may
see into these things. You give away your charities kindly enough,
but you don't know the folks you give to. If a few of you would but
be like the blessed Lord, and stoop to go out of the road, just
behind the hedge, for once, among the publicans and harlots! Were
you ever at a country fair, sir? Though I suppose I am rude for
fancying that you could demean yourself to such company.'

'I should not think it demeaning myself,' said Lancelot, smiling;
'but I never was at one, and I should like for once to see the real
manners of the poor.'

'I'm no haunter of such places myself, God knows; but--I see you're
in earnest now--