“What do you take that duty to be?” “To educate them!” “Educate—yes—educate them in the ways of health and cleanliness—after we have fed them. _That_ I take to be our primary duty to the children as much as to the lower animals. You know the old adage, Miss Dalbrook, _mens sana in corpore sano_. Did you ever hear of a sound and healthy mind in an unsound scrofulous body? So long as we leave the little children to semi-starvation, we are sacrificing to the Demon Scrofula, which is to our enlightened age what the Demon Leprosy was to those darker ages whose ignorance we prate about.” “I am not in favour of pauperizing the working classes,” said Harrington. “That idea of pauperism is a bugbear and a stumbling-block in the path of benevolence. Do you pauperize an agricultural labourer whose utmost wages are fifteen shillings a week if you provide his children with two good meals of fresh meat in the seven days, and so grow better bone and sinew than can be produced upon bread and dripping, or bread and treacle? Do you pauperize a man by giving him a free supply of pure water, and larger, airier rooms than his scanty wages will buy for him? To subsidize is not to pauperize, Mr. Dalbrook; and if England is to hold together upon the old lines during the coming centuries, the well-to-do will have to help the poor upon a stronger and wider basis than that on which they have helped them in the past, and a good deal of the spare cash that is now being spent on fine clothes and dinner-parties will have to be spent upon feeding and housing the million.” The two young men drove over to Milbrook early on Sunday morning, in order to attend morning service at the picturesque old church. Matthew Dalbrook and his daughters were to join them at the Priory in time for luncheon, which was to be a regular family party. Cuthbert was silent for the greater part of the drive, and Theodore was thoughtfully observant of him. Yes, there might be something in Sophy’s idea. More than once during that long drive the young man’s face brightened with a sudden smile, a smile of ineffable happiness, as of a dreaming lover who sees the gates of his earthly paradise opening, sees his mistress coming to meet him on the threshold. Theodore’s heart sank at the thought that Sophia had hit upon the truth. Anyway there was hopelessness in the idea. If it were to be Theodore’s blessed fate to see the one love of his life victorious, soon or late, after long patience and devoted sacrifice, Cuthbert must taste the bitterness of having loved in vain. But he would hardly be worthy of pity, perhaps, seeing that he had known from the first how the land lay, seeing that honour forbade his falling in love with Juanita.