‘Well!’ said Miss Grey, ‘and I would not give it for Windsor Castle. I like it ten thousand times better than your palace; and the poor folk in Riverside are just like me.’ ‘Dear lady,’ said Leo, in his perplexity, ‘it is not the same thing; but you take away my breath.’ Here Lady William came to his aid, yet did not fail to point a moral. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘you must not follow a hasty impulse even to do good. There are two reasons against making a desert of Riverside; first, because the people there don’t find it dreadful, as you do; and next, my dear Leo, because you’re not their feudal lord, as Miss Grey says, and the houses don’t belong to you.’ He shrugged his shoulders, as a man discomfited has a right to do. But Miss Grey burst in before he had time to say a word: ‘If that is what you want, Mr. Swinford, I can show you a place!’ XIII While Leo Swinford was making his first attempt to revolutionise, or perhaps pauperise, the parish under the irregular and unofficial guidance of Miss Grey and Mab, who had, of course, no public standing at all, though he would have been a bold Rector indeed who had disowned the abounding services and constant help of Miss Grey--other incidents were going on of still more importance to the conduct of this history. Notwithstanding the indignation with which she had received the suggestion that money was strong enough to unlock all doors and solve all problems, it was astonishing how soon that unauthorised and unofficial Providence of the parish found ways and means to disembarrass Leo of a considerable sum of money, and to produce a list of requirements for which that vulgar dross would be very useful. She adopted all Mab’s suggestions as to the Lloyd couple and old George, permitting that little weekly allowances should be given them to keep them in life and comfort; and she pronounced and sealed the doom of a group of cottages which, though they were not ugly, like Riverside, rather the contrary, a picturesque group, making quite a feature in the level country, were not fit to live in, as Mr. Swinford was reluctantly brought to allow. He did not like pulling to pieces the venerable walls and high-pitched roofs, with their growths of lichen, which were a picture in themselves, and struggled long in the name of art against that dire necessity. Indeed, the case was a parable, since we are all but too willing to pull down the ugly but not uncomfortable tenements of White the baker, though it costs us a pang to do away with the unwholesome prettiness of our own. But while Leo’s education in the duties of a proprietor was thus progressing, there was another young man whose training was going on in a very different way. Jim’s Sophocles became more and more hard upon him as the spring days grew longer, and the east winds blew themselves out, and the sun grew warm. What was the good of all that Greek? he asked himself, and there was reason in the question.