But Miss Dolly Darling was resolved to see
him righted, for she hated all national meanness.
"What is the use of having any influence," she asked her good father,
"unless you employ it for your own friends? I should be quite ashamed
to have it said of me, or thought, that I could get a good thing for any
one I was fond of, and was mean enough not to do it, for fear of paltry
jealousy. Mean is much too weak a word; it is downright dishonest, and
what is much worse, cowardly. What is the government meant for, unless
it is to do good to people?"
"Certainly, my dear child, certainly. To the people at large, that is to
say, and the higher interests of the country."
"Can there be any people more at large than Captain Stubbard and his
wife and children? Their elbows are coming out of their clothes, and
they have scarcely got a bed to sleep upon. My income is not enough to
stop to count, even when I get it paid punctually. But every farthing I
receive shall go--that is to say, if it ever does come--into the lap of
Mrs. Stubbard, anonymously and respectfully."
"Pay your bills, first," said the Admiral, taking the weather-gage of
the discussion: "a little bird tells me that you owe a good trifle, even
in Springhaven."
"Then the little bird has got a false bill," replied Dolly, who was not
very easy to fluster. "Who is there to spend sixpence with in a little
hole of this kind? I am not a customer for tea, coffee, tobacco, snuff,
or pepper, nor even for whiting, soles, or conger.
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