"
"And then," continued Faith, who was now upon one of her favourite
subjects past interruption, "you must try to remember that if you work
hard, so do we, or nearly all of us. From the time my father gets up in
the morning, to the time when he goes to bed at night, he has not got
five minutes--as he tells us every day--for attending to anything
but business. Even at dinner, when you get a good hour, and won't be
disturbed--now will you?"
"No, miss; not if all the work was tumbling down. No workman as respects
himself would take fifty-nine minutes for sixty."
"Exactly so; and you are right. You stand up for your rights. Your
dinner you have earned, and you will have it. And the same with your
breakfast, and your supper too, and a good long night to get over it. Do
you jump up in bed, before you have shut both eyes, hearing or fancying
you have heard the bell, that calls you out into the cold, and the dark,
and a wet saddle, from a warm pillow? And putting that by, as a trouble
of the war, and the chance of being shot at by dark tall men"--here
Faith shuddered at her own presentment, as the image of Caryl Carne
passed before her--"have you to consider, at every turn, that whatever
you do--though you mean it for the best--will be twisted and turned
against you by some one, and made into wickedness that you never dreamed
of, by envious people, whose grudge against you is that they fancy you
look down on them? Though I am sure of one thing, and that is that my
father, instead of looking down upon any honest man because he is poor,
looks up to him; and so do I; and so does every gentleman or lady.
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