"There would be no need for penitence in this case. The girl is a very respectable girl. Don't let her go there, that's all: and give me a cup of tea." "Isn't that like a man!" said Mrs. Wilberforce. "Don't let her go there, and give him a cup of tea!--the one just as easy as the other. I am sure I tell you often enough, Herbert, what with all that is done for them and said about them, the poor people are getting more and more unmanageable every day." "Our family has always been Liberal," said Minnie. "I think the poor people have their rights just as we have. They ought to be educated, and all that." "Very well," said the other lady; "when you have educated them up to thinking themselves as good--oh, what am I saying? far better--than their betters, you'll see what will come of it. I for one am quite prepared. I pity the people who deceive themselves. Herbert chooses to laugh, but I can't laugh; it is much too serious for that." "There will be peace in our days," said the rector, "and after all, Fanny, we can't have a revolution coming because Lizzie Hampson----" "Lizzie Hampson," said his wife solemnly, "is a sign of the times. She may be nothing in herself,--none of them are anything in themselves,--but I call her a sign of the times." "What a grand name for a little girl!" he said, with a laugh. But he added seriously, "I wish that house belonged to Theo, or some one we could bring influence to bear upon; but what does a city man care? I wish we could do as the Americans do, and put rollers under it, and cart it away out of the parish." "Can the Americans do that?" "They say so. They can do every sort of wonderful thing, I believe." "And that is what we are coming to!" said Mrs. Wilberforce, with an air of indignant severity, as if this had been the most dreadful accusation in the world. "I suppose," said the rector, strolling with the young ladies to the gate, "that Theo holds by the family politics? I wonder whether he has given any attention to public questions. At his age a young fellow either does--or he does not," he added, with a laugh. "Oxford often makes a change." "We don't approve of ladies taking any part in politics," said Minnie, "and I am sure I have never mentioned the subject to Theo." "But you know, Minnie, mamma said that Theo was--well, I don't remember what she said he was, but certainly not the same as he was brought up."