“What under the sun!” he began, frowning; then he got up and stood on the hearth-rug, his back to the fire. “Lydia, I hope you are not going to be a fool? What are you talking about? Sit down,--sit down! You’re as white as a ghost. Lily, I’m afraid you’re a great goose. What’s the matter?” He could not help softening as he looked at her. She stood there by the little tottering table, loaded with its dozens of foolish bits of silver, so tense and quivering that even his impatient eyes could not fail to see her agitation. “Robert, you have been so kind to us; you are so good to us,--oh, I don’t know how I can do it!” she broke into an anguished sob,--“but I must. Mr. Eaton would never have let the children be supported on money that was not--that was not good.” There was silence; the clock in the hall chimed ten. Then Eleanor Blair, sitting up, pale and angry, said,-- “Well, upon my word!” Her husband looked at his sister with sudden kindness in his eyes. “Lily, you don’t understand. When I said what I did to Mr. Hudson,--of course, that has put it into your head,--I didn’t really mean it. In the first place, I’m an honest man (I’ll just mention that in passing), and it is not your business nor his to judge my business methods. It isn’t a pretty thing to look a gift-horse in the mouth, Lil.” “It isn’t what you said to Mr. Hudson,” she answered. “I’ve been thinking about it for nearly a year. Robert, you pay them so little, and I--I have all this.” She looked about the beautiful room with a sort of fright: it seemed to her that the warm and stately walls hid human misery lying close outside,--hunger and hatred, cold and sickness, and the terror of to-morrow. The impudent luxury of this enormous wealth struck her like a blow on the mouth. “They,” she said, with a sob, “_are hungry_.” Her brother, divided between irritation and amusement, was touched in spite of himself. “My dear Lily,” he said, “you can’t understand this thing. To put it vulgarly, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Look here, the men can go to work to-morrow if they want to; but they don’t want to. I offer them work, and they can take it or leave it. Well, they leave it. It’s their affair, not mine.” But she shook her head miserably. “I don’t understand it. If you were poor, too, it would be different.” “Well, really!” said Mrs. Blair. But Robert Blair was wonderfully patient. “There’s another thing you must remember, Lily; these people are far better off on what I am willing to pay them than they were in Europe, where most of them came from.” “But, Robert,” she said passionately, “because they could be worse off doesn’t seem to be any reason why they shouldn’t be better off. And--_it isn’t kind_.” “Kind?” Her brother looked at her blankly, and then, with a shout of laughter, “Lydia, you are as good as a play! No, my dear; I don’t run my mills for kindness.” “But,” she said, almost in a whisper, “whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you”--