Little Sara Cresswell came much about me in the library in those days; she interested herself in my business much; she tried to interfere with my work and help me, as the kitten called it. All the outlays on the estate, the works that were going on, the improvements I loved to set a-going--which did not all come to anything,--and the failures, of which to be sure there were plenty--pleased the impatient creature mightily. I was considered rather speculative and fanciful among the Cheshire squires; they did not approve of my goings on; they thought me a public nuisance for preserving no game, and making a fuss about cottages. But I am sorry to say little Sara did not agree with the squires. She thought my small bits of improvements very slow affairs indeed; she grew indignant at my stinginess and contracted ideas. She thought any little I did were just preliminary attempts not worth mentioning. When was I to begin the work in earnest she wanted to know? “What work, Sara?” “What work? Why, here are you, godmamma, an old lady--you will never grow any wiser or any better than you are,” cried the intolerable child. “You can’t get any more good out of all that belongs to the Park than just your nice little dinners, and teas, and the carriage, and the servants, and, perhaps, half-a-dozen dresses in the year,--though I do believe three would be nearer true,--and to keep all these farms, and fields, and meadows, and orchards, and things, all for godmamma Sarah and you! Don’t you feel frightened sometimes when you wake up suddenly at night?” “You saucy little puss!--why?” cried I. “To think of the poor,” said Sara, with a solemn look. She held herself straight up, and looked quite dignified as she turned her reproving eyes on me. “Quantities of families without any homes, quantities of little children growing up worse than your pigs, godmamma, quantities of people starving, and living, and crowding, and quarrelling in black streets not as broad as this room, with courts off from them, like those horrid, frightful places in Liverpool. While out here you are living in your big rooms, in your big house, with the green park all round and round you, and farmers, and gardeners, and cottagers, and servants, and all sorts of people, working to make you comfortable; with more money than you know what to do with, and everything belonging to yourself, and nobody to interfere with you. And why have you any right to it more than _them_?” Little Sara’s figure swelled out, and her dark eyes shone bright as she was speaking. It took away my breath. “Are you a Chartist, child?” I cried.