Then she poured forth suddenly, without warning or preparation, her long speech,--a flood of words which must have been all ready and waiting at the doors of her lips for utterance. “Oh, sir, I want to speak to you! I can’t believe you’ll be so hard, for you’re young; and I can’t believe he’ll be so hard if so be as his own son, as I’ve always heard he had but one, ’ll speak up for us. Oh, gentleman, it is easy for the likes of you, that, if you ain’t comfortable in one room, can just walk into another; but if one room is all you have, and every bit of furniture you have taken out of it, and nothing but the four walls left,--not so much as the cradle for the child, or a chair for your man to sit down upon when he comes from his work, or a saucepan to cook him his supper--” “My good woman,” I said, “who can have taken all that from you? Surely nobody can be so cruel?” “You say it’s cruel!” she cried with a sort of triumph. “Oh, I knowed you would, or any true gentleman that don’t hold with screwing poor folks. Just go and say that to him inside there for the love of God. Tell him to think what he’s doing, driving poor creatures to despair. Summer’s coming, the Lord be praised, but yet it’s bitter cold at night with your counterpane gone; and when you’ve been working hard all day, and nothing but four bare walls to come home to, and all your poor little sticks of furniture that you’ve saved up for, and got together one by one, all gone, and you no better than when you started, or rather worse, for then you was young. Oh, sir!” the woman’s voice rose into a sort of passionate wail. And then she added, beseechingly, recovering herself, “Oh, speak for us; he’ll not refuse his own son--” “To whom am I to speak? Who is it that has done this to you?” I said. The woman hesitated again, looking keenly in my face, then repeated with a slight faltering, “It’s Mr. Philip?” as if that made everything right. “Yes; I am Philip Canning,” I said; “but what have I to do with this? and to whom am I to speak?” She began to whimper, crying and stopping herself. “Oh, please, sir! it’s Mr. Canning as owns all the house property about; it’s him that our court and the lane and everything belongs to. And he’s taken the bed from under us, and the baby’s cradle, although it’s said in the Bible as you’re not to take poor folks’ bed.” “My father!” I cried in spite of myself; “then it must be some agent, some one else in his name. You may be sure he knows nothing of it. Of course I shall speak to him at once.” “Oh, God bless you, sir,” said the woman. But then she added, in a lower tone, “It’s no agent. It’s one as never knows trouble. It’s him that lives in that grand house.” But this was said under her breath, evidently not for me to hear.