“Well, spend away,—money, time, thought, kindness,—till you can fairly say that you have done by everybody as you would be done by! It will be time enough then to think what next. And, first, about these cottages of yours. If no more people are to die in them, murdered by filth and damp, you have no time to lose. You must not sit here, talking remorse, and planning fine deeds, but you must set the work going this very day. Come! let us go and see.” Farmer Neale walked rather feebly through the hall: so Mr. Kirby called him into the parlour, and gave him a glass of wine. Still, as they went down the street, one man observed to another, that Neale looked ten years older in a day. He looked round him, however, with some signs of returning spirits, when he saw the boys at their street-cleaning, and observed, that hereabouts things looked wholesome enough. “Mere outside scouring,” said Mr. Kirby. “Better than dirt, as far as it goes; unless, indeed, it makes us satisfied to have whited sepulchres for dwellings. Come and see the uncleanness within.” Mr. Kirby did not spare him. He took him through all the seven cottages, for which he had extorted extravagant rents, without fulfilling any conditions on his own part. He showed him every bit of broken roof, of damp wall, of soaked floor. He showed him every heap of filth, every puddle of nastiness caused by there being no drains, or other means of removal of refuse. He advised him to make a note of every repair needed; and, when he saw that Neale’s hand shook so that he could not write, took the pencil from his hand, and did it himself. Two of the seven cottages he condemned utterly: and Neale eagerly agreed to pull them down, and rebuild them with every improvement requisite to health. To the others he would supply what was wanting, and especially drainage. They stood in such a cluster that it was practicable to drain them all into a gully of the rock which, by being covered over, by a little building up at one end, and a little blasting at one side, might be made into a considerable tank, which was to be closed by a tight-fitting, and very heavy slab at top. Mr. Kirby conceded so much to the worldly spirit of the man he had to deal with, as to point out that the manure thus saved would so fertilise his fields as soon to repay the cost of this batch of drainage. Neale did not care for this at the moment. He was too sore at heart at the spectacle of these cottages and their inmates,—too much shaken by remorse and fear,—for any idea of profit and loss: but Mr. Kirby thought it as well to point out the fact, as it might help to animate the hard man to proceed in a good work, when his present melting mood should be passing away.