I am always scolding
Lenore for coming in dishevelled, and you look so fresh and compact!
Here is my sanctum. You'll find Mrs. Duncombe there. She drove
over in the drag with her husband on their way to Backsworth. I am
so glad you came, there is so much to talk over."

"If our gentlemen will give us time," said Mrs. Duncombe; "but I am
afraid your senator will not be as much absorbed in the dogs as my
captain."

"I did not come with my husband," said Cecil; "he is gone to
Willansborough to meet the architect."

"Ah, about the new buildings. I do hope and trust the opportunity
will not be wasted, and that the drainage will be provided for."

"You are longing to have a voice there," said Lady Tyrrell,
laughing.

"I am. It is pre-eminently a woman's question, and this is a great
opportunity. I shall talk to every one. Little Pettitt, the hair-
dresser, has some ground there, and he is the most intelligent of
the tradesmen. I gave him one of those excellent little hand-bills,
put forth by the Social Science Committee, on sanitary arrangements.
I thought of asking you to join us in ordering some down, and never
letting a woman leave our work-room without one."

"You couldn't do better, I am sure," said Lady Tyrrell; "only,
what's the use of preaching to the poor creatures to live in good
houses, when their landlords won't build them, and they must live
somewhere?"

"Make them coerce the landlords," said Mrs. Duncombe; "that's the
only way. Upheave the masses from beneath."

"But that's an earthquake," said Cecil.

"Earthquakes are sometimes wholesome."

"But the process is not so agreeable that we had not rather avert
it," said Lady Tyrrell.

"All ours at Dunstone are model cottages," said Cecil; "it is my
father's great hobby."

"Squires' hobbies are generally like the silver trough the lady gave
her sow," said Mrs. Duncombe; "they come before the poor are
prepared, and with a spice of the autocrat."

"Come, I won't have you shock Mrs. Charnock Poynsett," said Lady
Tyrrell. "You illogical woman! The poor are to demand better
houses, and the squires are not to build them!"

"The poor are to be fitly housed, as a matter of right, and from
their own sense of self-respect," returned Mrs. Duncombe; "not a few
favourites, who will endure dictation, picked out for the model
cottage. It is the hobby system against which I protest."

"Without quite knowing what was conveyed by it in this instance?"