Lord and Lady Bendham's birth, education, talents, and propensities, being much on the same scale of eminence, they would have been a very happy pair, had not one great misfortune intervened--the lady never bore her lord a child, while every cottage of the village was crammed with half-starved children, whose father from week to week, from year to year, exerted his manly youth, and wasted his strength in vain, to protect them from hunger; whose mother mourned over her new-born infant as a little wretch, sent into the world to deprive the rest of what already was too scanty for them; in the castle, which owned every cottage and all the surrounding land, and where one single day of feasting would have nourished for a mouth all the poor inhabitants of the parish, not one child was given to partake of the plenty. The curse of barrenness was on the family of the lord of the manor, the curse of fruitfulness upon the famished poor. This lord and lady, with an ample fortune, both by inheritance and their sovereign's favour, had never yet the economy to be exempt from debts; still, over their splendid, their profuse table, they could contrive and plan excellent schemes "how the poor might live most comfortably with a little better management." The wages of a labouring man, with a wife and half a dozen small children, Lady Bendham thought quite sufficient if they would only learn a little economy. "You know, my lord, those people never want to dress--shoes and stockings, a coat and waistcoat, a gown and a cap, a petticoat and a handkerchief, are all they want--fire, to be sure, in winter--then all the rest is merely for provision." "I'll get a pen and ink," said young Henry, one day, when he had the honour of being at their table, "and see what the _rest_ amounts to." "No, no accounts," cried my lord, "no summing up; but if you were to calculate, you must add to the receipts of the poor my gift at Christmas--last year, during the frost, no less than a hundred pounds." "How benevolent!" exclaimed the dean. "How prudent!" exclaimed Henry. "What do you mean by prudent?" asked Lord Bendham. "Explain your meaning." "No, my lord," replied the dean, "do not ask for an explanation: this youth is wholly unacquainted with our customs, and, though a man in stature, is but a child in intellects. Henry, have I not often cautioned you--" "Whatever his thoughts are upon the subject," cried Lord Bendham, "I desire to know them." "Why, then, my lord," answered Henry, "I thought it was prudent in you to give a little, lest the poor, driven to despair, should take all." "And if they had, they would have been hanged." "Hanging, my lord, our history, or some tradition, says, was formerly adopted as a mild punishment, in place of starving." "I am sure," cried Lady Bendham (who seldom spoke directly to the argument before her), "I am sure they ought to think themselves much obliged to us." "That is the greatest hardship of all," cried Henry.