"
"If you please, sir," said Dan, who was following in the track, though
invited to walk by the side, of Caryl Carne, "I can hardly tell you how
the lower orders feel, because father and me don't belong to them. Our
family have always owned their own boat, and worked for their own hand,
this two hundred years, and, for all we know, ever since the Romans was
here. We call them the lower orders, as come round to pick up jobs, and
have no settlement in our village."
"A sound and very excellent distinction, Dan. But as against those who
make the laws, and take good care to enforce them, even you (though of
the upper rank here) must be counted of the lower order. For instance,
can you look at a pheasant, or a hare, without being put into prison?
Can you dine in the same room with Admiral Darling, or ask how his gout
is, without being stared at?"
"No, sir. He would think it a great impertinence, even if I dared to do
such a thing. But my father might do it, as a tenant and old neighbour.
Though he never gets the gout, when he rides about so much."
"What a matter-of-fact youth it is! But to come to things every man has
a right to. If you saved the life of one of the Admiral's daughters,
and she fell in love with you, as young people will, would you dare even
lift your eyes to her? Would you not be kicked out of the house and the
parish, if you dared to indulge the right of every honest heart?
Would you dare to look upon her as a human being, of the same order of
creation as yourself, who might one day be your wife, if you were true
and honest, and helped to break down the absurd distinctions built up by
vile tyranny between you? In a word, are you a man--as every man is on
the Continent--or only an English slave, of the lower classes?"
The hot flush of wrath, and the soft glow of shame, met and deepened
each other on the fair cheeks of this "slave"; while his mind would
not come to him to make a fit reply.
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