buse.
You must have a prime minister, or you will get yourself into a series
of scrapes. You suggested Miss Ainley yourself; to Miss Ainley I will
apply. And, meantime, promise to keep quiet, and not begin throwing away
your money. What a great deal you have, Shirley! You must feel very rich
with all that?"

"Yes; I feel of consequence. It is not an immense sum, but I feel
responsible for its disposal; and really this responsibility weighs on
my mind more heavily than I could have expected. They say that there are
some families almost starving to death in Briarfield. Some of my own
cottagers are in wretched circumstances. I must and will help them."

"Some people say we shouldn't give alms to the poor, Shirley."

"They are great fools for their pains. For those who are not hungry, it
is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity, and so on: but they
forget the brevity of life, as well as its bitterness. We have none of
us long to live. Let us help each other through seasons of want and woe
as well as we can, without heeding in the least the scruples of vain
philosophy."

"But you do help others, Shirley. You give a great deal as it is."

"Not enough. I must give more, or, I tell you, my brother's blood will
some day be crying to Heaven against me. For, after all, if political
incendiaries come here to kindle conflagration in the neighbourhood, and
my property is attacked, I shall defend it like a tigress--I know I
shall. Let me listen to Mercy as long as she is near me. Her voice once
drowned by the shout of ruffian defiance, and I shall be full of
impulses to resist and quell. If once the poor gather and rise in the
form of the mob, I shall turn against them as an aristocrat; if they
bully me, I must defy: if they attack, I must resist, and I will."

"You talk like Robert."

"I feel like Robert, only more fierily. Let them meddle with Robert, or
Robert's mill, or Robert's interests, and I shall hate them. At present
I am no patrician, nor do I regard the poor around me as plebeians; but
if once they violently wrong me or mine, and then presume to dictate to
us, I shall quite forget pity for their wretchedness and respect for
their poverty, in scorn of their ignorance and wrath at their
insolence."

"Shirley, how your eyes flash!"

"Because my soul burns. Would you, any more than me, let Robert be borne
down by numbers?"

"If I had your power to aid Robert, I would use it as you mean to use
it. If I c