Part 12 (1/2)
”Who can this low-bred talkative fellow be?” said Mr. Trevor. ”It is not difficult for an impostor to pa.s.s himself off as a colonel, when those who would have proofs of his being so must seek for them at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.”
”I doubt this man's being American at all,” observed Bruce. ”I did not detect in his speech the peculiar Yankee accent, though it was interlarded with Yankee phrases.”
”I shall not encourage this colonel's coming about the house,” said Mr.
Trevor, walking up to the window. ”Why, there's Vibert accompanying him down the drive!”
”And they look hand and glove,” added Bruce. ”How they are laughing and talking together!”
”Vibert is young and unsuspicious,” observed Mr. Trevor, as he turned from the window; ”his generous, frank disposition lays him peculiarly open to deception. We must make some inquiries at S---- regarding this Colonel Standish. Your tutor, Mr. Blair, may know something of the man, and the character which he bears.”
”I will not forget to gain what information I can,” said Bruce Trevor.
CHAPTER XIII.
WORK.
On the following Sunday afternoon Emmie was sitting alone by the drawing-room window, with a devotional book in her hand, but her eyes resting on the fading glories of the woodland landscape, and her thoughts on her childhood's home, when she was joined by her brother Bruce.
”I am glad to find you alone,” said Bruce, as he took a seat by his sister's side; ”I want to consult you, I need your help.”
Such words from the lips of the speaker were gratifying to Emmie; Bruce was ever more ready to give help than to ask it. Emmie closed her book, put it down, and was at once all attention.
”I have been making a little chart of the estate,” said Bruce, unrolling a paper which he placed before his sister.
”What are those square marks on it?” inquired Emmie, looking with interest at the neatly executed chart.
”These are cottages,--some larger, some smaller,” was the reply. ”Those buildings marked in red are public-houses; those in green are farms. You observe that there is not a church or a school in the place; there is not one nearer than S----.”
”More's the pity!” said Emmie.
”If you count, you will find that there are eighty-seven tenements of various kinds, and the dwellers in them are, of course, all tenants of our father. Give five individuals to each family, and you have four hundred and thirty-five souls on this estate, without a resident clergyman.”
”And what can bring so many people around us?” asked Emmie.
”I believe the dye-works,” answered her brother. ”They give employment to most of the men who are not farm-labourers, and, as far as I have ascertained, to some of the women also.”
”Then the people are not very poor,” observed Emmie, with a look of relief; for she had been alarmed at the idea of more than four hundred beggars being quartered on her father's estate.
”The men in work ought not to be very poor,” said Bruce; ”but then there are sure to be widows, sick folk, and some too old for work. Besides this, improvidence, ignorance, and vice always bring misery in their train, and, from all that I have heard or seen, the people here are little better than heathens. The children run about like wild creatures; there is no one to teach them their duty to G.o.d or to man.”
”I hope that papa may in time set up a school,” said Emmie.--Compulsory education was a thing not yet introduced into England.
”I hope that he may; but he cannot do so at present,” observed Bruce. ”I was talking with him on the subject on our way from church this morning.
Our father's expenses in educating Vibert and myself are heavy, and if either or both of us go to college they will be heavier still. Yet for these wretched tenants something should be done, and at once.”
”Papa intends gradually to repair or rebuild some of the cottages.”
”I am speaking of the people who inhabit the cottages,” interrupted Bruce; ”the dirty, ignorant, swearing, lying creatures who are dropping off, year by year, from misery on this side of the grave to worse misery beyond it.”