“'Ain't you got a drop o' milk?” asked Richard.
“Milk!” echoed the woman; “it's weeks an' weeks the childer 'ain't tasted of it! The wonder to me is that the cows let a poor man milk 'em!”
Richard set Alice on her feet, but she could not stand alone; had he taken his arm from round her, she would have fallen in a heap. But the woman while she spoke had been getting a light, and now came to the door with a candle-end. Her husband kept prudently in her shadow.
“Poor thing! poor thing! she be far gone!” she said, when she saw her. “Bring her in, sir. There's a chair she can sit upon. I'll get her a drop o' tea—that'll be better'n milk! There's next to no work, and the squire he be mad wi' Giles acause o' some rabbit or other they says he snared—which they did say it was a hare—I don'ow: take the skin off, an' who's to tell t'one from t'other! I do know I was right glad on't for the childer! An' if the parson tell me my man 'ill be damned for hare or rabbit, an' the childer starvin', I'll give him a bit o' my mind.—'No, sir!' says I; 'God ain't none o' your sort!' says I. 'An' p'r'aps the day may be at hand when the rich an' the poor 'ill have a turn o' a change together! Leastways there's somethin' like it somewheres i' the Bible,' says I. 'An' if it be i' the Bible,' says I, 'it's likely to be true, for the Bible do take the part o' the rich—mostly!'”
She was a woman who liked to hear herself talk, and so spoke as one listening to herself. Like most people, whether they talk or not, she got her ideas second-hand; but Richard was nowise inclined to differ with what she said about the Bible, for he knew little more and no better about it than she. Had parson Wingfold, who did know the Bible as few parsons know it, heard her, he would have told her that, by search express and minute, he had satisfied himself that there was not a word in the Bible against the poor, although a multitude of words against the rich. The sins of the poor are not once mentioned in the Bible, the sins of the rich very often. The rich may think this hard, but I state the fact, and do not much care what they think. When they come to judge themselves and others fairly, they will understand that God is no respecter of persons, not favouring even the poor in his cause.
Richard set Alice on the one chair, by the poor little fire the woman was coaxing to heat the water she had put on it in a saucepan. Alice stared at the fire, but hardly seemed to see it. The woman tried to comfort her. Richard looked round the place: the man was in the bed that filled one corner; a mattress in another was crowded with children; there was no spot where she could lie down.
“I shall be back as soon's ever I can,” he said, and left the cottage.
CHAPTER XXVII. A SISTER.
He hurried back over the bare, moon-white road. He had seen Miss Wylder come that morning, and hoped to reach the house, which was not very far off, before she should have gone to bed. Of her alone in that house did he feel he could ask the help he needed. If she had gone home, he would try the gardener's wife! But he wanted a woman with wit as well as will. He would help himself from the larder if he could not do better—but there would be no brandy there!