“I would with pleasure,” she answered, “only---- Don’t look so cross, David, but sit down, and I will tell you just how it is. You know Miss Wilton’s brother, don’t you, or, at least, you’ve seen him? He is a clergyman in a very poor parish near Hoxton. The people there are horribly, sordidly poor. They are housed together like cattle instead of human beings, with the consequence that vice and misery are rife amongst them. Most of them couldn’t go to church even if they wanted to, because they haven’t any decent clothes to go in. Oh, I almost had the nightmare after Mr. Wilton had told me of some of the horrors of their daily lives! He would not have told me, only I asked him: for since I came to London, my eyes have been opened to all the miserable poverty and suffering there is in this great city, and I wanted to know more about it; I don’t think it’s right to close one’s eyes to these things. Mr. Wilton took me over his church and parish this morning; it is a dreadfully poor church, and not at all properly fitted up. Well, to come to the point, I thought that, having this nugget, which, as you say, is of no use to me, it would be a good thing to sell it and give the money to one of Mr. Wilton’s funds. I am sure my father would have no objection to my selling it for such a good cause; and Mr. Friedberg has promised to dispose of it for me. Don’t you think it a nice idea, David?” She looked into his eyes, half appealingly, hoping to read therein approval and sympathy; but his brow had knit into a frown during her recital, and the expression on his face was one of ill-concealed displeasure. Celia was, in reality, a tender-hearted, large-souled child; David considered her in this respect a silly little fool. “I am quite sure your father would object,” he said decidedly. “The nugget has been in your family for years, and it would be a pity to sell it, unless you were absolutely driven to do so, which you never will be. Besides, what do you want to bother yourself about Mr. Wilton’s church for? If you have such charitable inclinations, why do you not interest yourself in the Jewish poor? Surely our own people should come first?”