‘Well, I suppose they may do some good,’ said Roger, unwillingly. ‘You need not get so hot about it; but you might do just as much good with less fuss. And why should you shut yourself up in a penitentiary as if you had done something you were ashamed of? Why should you slave and teach for your living? We are not so poor as that. If the brothers all work,’ said Roger, with a not unbecoming glow of pride, ‘there ought always to be plenty for the sisters at home.’ ‘But I must live my life too, as well as my brothers; and do what I can before the night comes,’ said Agnes, with a little solemnity, ‘when no man can work.’ Roger was subdued by the quotation more than by all her reasons. He could not, as he said to himself, go against Scripture, which certainly did exhort every man to work before the night cometh. Did that mean every woman too? ‘The short and the long of it is,’ he said, half sulkily, half melted, ‘that you were never content at home, Agnes. Are you contented here?’ That was a home question. Agnes shrank a little and faltered, avoiding a direct reply. ‘You do not look very contented yourself. Have you been to see Cara?’ she said. ‘How is she? I have not heard a word of her since I came here.’ ‘Oh, Cara is well enough. She is not like you, setting up for eccentric work. She is quite happy at home. Miss Cherry is there at present, looking after her. It is a handsome house, choke full of china and things. And I suppose, from all I hear, she has a very jolly life,’ said Roger, with a certain shade of moroseness creeping over his face, ‘parties and lots of friends.’ ‘I daresay she does not forget the people she used to like, for all that,’ said Agnes, more kind than he was, and divining the uncontent in his face. ‘Oh, I don’t know. There are some people who never leave her alone, who pretend to be old friends too,’ said Roger, ruefully. ‘And they live next door, worse luck; they are always there. Other old friends have no chance beside these Merediths.’ ‘Oh!--is their name Meredith?’ ‘Yes; do you know them? There is one, a palavering fellow, talks twenty to the dozen, and thinks no end of himself--a sneering beggar. I don’t mind the other so much; but that Oswald fellow----’ ‘Oh!--is his name Oswald?’ ‘I believe you know him. Do swells like that come a-visiting here?’ ‘Oh, no,’ said Agnes, anxiously smoothing down suspicion; ‘there is a name--much the same--in Sister Mary Jane’s list of subscriptions. Oh, yes; and the gentleman carried a poor child to the hospital so very kindly. I noticed the name, because--because there is a poet called Oswald, or Owen, or something, Meredith. I wondered,’ said Agnes, faltering, telling the truth but meaning a fib, ‘whether it could be the same.’