The young man looked all surprise. "Why, what an idea!" lisped he. "Our association does not profess to help sinners. That would be a go!" "Sinners!" "We can't be expected to take up a sinner, you know--and she's a topping one," continued he, keeping just as cool as the Squire was hot. "We found out all sorts of dreadful things against the woman. The name, Mapping, is not hers, to begin with. She went to church with a man who had a living wife----" "She didn't," burst in the Squire. "It was the man who went to church with her. And I hope with all my heart he came to be hanged!" The clerk considered. "It comes to the same, doesn't it?" said he, vaguely. "She did go to church with him; and it was ever so long before his proper wife found it out; and she has gone on calling herself Mapping ever since! And she managed so badly in a lodging-house she set up, that she was sold out of it for rent. Consider that! Oh, indeed, then, it is not on such people as these that our good gentlemen would waste their money." "What do they waste it on?" demanded the Squire. "Oh, come now! They don't waste it. They spend it." "What on? The sick and needy?" "Well, you see, the object of this benevolent association is to discover who is deserving and who is not. When an applicant comes or sends for relief, representing that he is sick and starving, and all the rest of it, we begin by searching out his back sins and misfortunes. The chances are that a whole lot of ill turns up. If the case be really deserving, and--and white, you know, instead of black--we relieve it." "That is, you relieve about one case in a hundred, I expect?" stormed the Squire. "Oh, now you can't want me to go into figures," said the clerk, in his simple way. "Anybody might know, if they've some knowledge of the world, that an out-and-out deserving case does not turn up often. Besides, our business is not relief but inquiry. We do relieve sometimes, but we chiefly inquire." "Now look you here," retorted the Squire. "Your object, inquiring into cases, may be a good one in the main and do some excellent service; I say nothing against it; but the public hold the impression that it is _relief_ your association intends, not inquiry. Why is this erroneous impression not set to rights?" "Oh, but our system is, I assure you, a grand one," cried the young fellow. "It accomplishes an immense good." "And how much harm does it accomplish? Hold your tongue, young man! Put it that an applicant is sick, starving, _dying_, for want of a bit of aid in the shape of food, does your system give that bit of aid, just to keep body and soul together while it makes its inquiries--say only to the value of a few pence?" The young fellow stared. "What a notion!" cried he. "Give help before finding out whether it ought to be given or not? That would be quite a Utopian way of fixing up the poor, that would."