"Why, you should know all about it, Mr. Faber," said Lockwood, "for you used to write all the letters to the steward, he told me. However, they are not altogether so badly off as they might be. The farmer has his land at a fair rent enough, and so he can afford to give fair wages to his labourers. The old man was not hard in that. He took what was but just, for that which was his own, and the men have prospered under it; but he did nothing else for the neighbourhood. Some of the landlords round are different, get as much as they can wring from their tenants--force them to starve their labourers; and then spend a part of the money in parish schools and new churches. I have known many a one who has made every one under him labour like galley-slaves for mere existence, by reason of his exactions, cried up as a most liberal gentleman, because he whitewashed the cottages, and built a school-house. The whitewash and the school-house together did not cost one-tenth of what he took too much for his land; and yet, to hear all the gentry speak of him, you would have thought he was an angel of a landlord. Men are queer things, Mr. Faber." "Do not call me Mr. Faber, Lockwood," said the other with a smile; "call me simply Chandos; that is better between brothers." "Ah, that is your Christian name, then," said his stout kinsman; "'C. Faber,' I remember the letter I saw was signed; but I thought the name had been Charles. Take another cup of tea, Chandos: it is wrung from no man's hard earnings, and will do you good." "After all," said Chandos, resuming the conversation at a previous point, "the man who does not exact too much is by far less culpable, though he do not do all the good to his people that he can, than he who, with a covetous grasp, wrings the last shilling from his property, and spends sixpence of it in instructing the peasantry, whitewashing their houses, or pampering his own vanity. The one is only guilty of doing less than he might, the other of taking more than he ought." "I am not very sure," answered his companion, musing; "I have thought over these matters a good deal, and I am not fond of splitting hairs about right and wrong. If a man does not do what he ought, he does what he ought not. 'Sins of omission,' as the parson calls them, are, to my mind, sins of commission, as soon as ever a man knows what he ought to do, and does not do it. I have a notion, Chandos, all these fine differences are only ways by which people cheat themselves to avoid self-reproach; and, I believe, what foolish people call the higher classes, are taught to do so more than any others by reading the classics; for a more wicked sort of worthless scoundrels than those old Greeks and Romans never was. The very best of them contrived to mix up so much bad with their best doings, that young lads at school learn not to know right from wrong, and to think things exceedingly fine that were very dirty."