Of course there were a few people who shut themselves out of the feast, and sneered at the music and dancing, all the more angrily because they knew that they were not sharers in some strange joy which they could not understand. Mrs. Hunter and her stepson were among the number. William smoked more cigars in that one day than he had ever consumed in the same space of time before, for his nerves needed soothing. “It is more than a sane fellow can comprehend—madness, I call it,” he said, between the whiffs; “throwing money away on the lower orders. I told John so this morning; and what do you think he said?” “I cannot tell, indeed; something about universal brotherhood or other nonsense of the same kind,” said John’s mother. “He said there were no lower orders!” “Indeed?” “Yes; he said there must always be masters and men—persons who represented property and persons who represented labour: those who worked with the head and those who worked with the hands; but no Christian man had a right to selfishly keep his riches to himself; and that in this country, with all the money that is going, no one ought to know the meaning of the word ‘poverty’; and that it was adding insult to injury to speak of lower orders.” “And what did you say?” “‘Bosh!’ and he said ‘Perhaps,’ and then I said ‘Rot!’ and he laughed. And I told him he was going dead against the Bible, and casting pearls before swine; and that, instead of thanking him, they would turn again and rend him. And he said he was not doing it in the hope of getting thanks, and was paid as he went on, whatever that might mean; and I called him a fool.” “You did?” “Yes, I did; but I thought it better not to let him hear me.” “He will bring ruin upon us all with these stupid, new-fangled notions.” “He says they are not new-fangled, but as old as the Gospel and the Sermon on the Mount.” “I cannot understand it. Somebody has got hold of him. I suppose Margaret Miller and Arthur Knight have between them turned his brain.” “A set of hypocrites, pretending to be so much better than their neighbours! I have no patience with them. But it won’t last.” “No; it won’t last.” There were four or five other houses in Darentdale where those who stood aloof from the new movement tried to comfort themselves also, as well as they could, by declaring that it would not last, and no good would come of it. Margaret Miller and Tom Whitwell had a royal time, assisted by the other young ladies of the village. “Margaret, can you find out what they do at ‘the public,’” asked Tom, “because I am going to compete with the publican for the favour of the men of our parish?” “There is, first of all, the drink.”