young lass! Ye've gi'en your brass: ye've
done well. If ye could transport your tenant, Mr. Moore, to Botany Bay, ye'd
happen do better. Folks hate him.«
    »William, for shame!« exclaimed Caroline, warmly. »If folks do hate him, it
is to their disgrace, not his. Mr. Moore himself hates nobody; he only wants to
do his duty, and maintain his rights: you are wrong to talk so!«
    »I talk as I think. He has a cold, unfeeling heart, yond' Moore.«
    »But,« interposed Shirley, »supposing Moore was driven from the country, and
his mill razed to the ground, would people have more work?«
    »They'd have less. I know that, and they know that; and there is many an
honest lad driven desperate by the certainty that whichever way he turns, he
cannot better himself, and there is dishonest men plenty to guide them to the
devil: scoundrels that reckons to be the people's friends, and that knows naught
about the people, and is as insincere as Lucifer. I've lived aboon forty year in
the world, and I believe that the people will never have any true friends but
theirsel'n, and them two or three good folk i' different stations, that is
friends to all the world. Human natur', taking it i' th' lump, is naught but
selfishness. It is but excessive few; it is but just an exception here and
there, now and then, sich as ye two young 'uns and me, that being in a different
sphere, can understand t' one t' other, and be friends wi'-out slavishness o'
one hand, or pride o' t' other. Them that reckons to be friends to a lower class
than their own fro' political motives is never to be trusted: they always try to
make their inferiors tools. For my own part, I will neither be patronized nor
misled for no man's pleasure. I've had overtures made to me lately that I saw
were treacherous, and I flung 'em back i' the faces o' them that offered 'em.«
    »You won't tell us what overtures?«
    »I will not: it would do no good; it would mak' no difference: them they
concerned can look after theirsel'n.«
    »Ay, we'se look after wersel'n,«