"My dear!" said Nurse Bundle, almost with tears in her eyes, "you're for all the world your dear mamma over again. Keep them notions, my dear, when you're a grown gentleman, and there'll be a blessing on all you do. For in all reason it's you that'll have to look to your pa's property and tenants some time."
My father, though not himself an adept in the details of what is commonly called "parish work," was both liberal and kind-hearted. He liked my knowing the names of his tenants, and taking an interest in their families. He was well pleased to respond by substantial help when Nurse Bundle and I pleaded for this sick woman or that unshod child, as my mother had pleaded in old days. As for Nurse Bundle, she had a code of virtues for "young ladies and gentlemen," as such, and charity to the poor was among them. Though I confess that I think she regarded it more in the light of a grace adorning a certain station, than as a duty incumbent upon all men.
So I came to know most of the villagers; and being a quaint child, with a lively and amusing curiosity, which some little refinement and good-breeding stayed from degenerating into impertinence, I was, I believe, very popular.
One afternoon, during the spring that followed our return from London, I had strolled out with Rubens, and was bowling my hoop towards one of the lodges when a poor woman passed by on the drive (which was a public road through the park), her apron to her face, weeping bitterly. I stopped her, and asked what was the matter, and finally made out that she had been to some sale at a farmhouse near, where a certain large blanket had "gone for" five shillings. That she had scraped five shillings together, and had intended to bid for it, but had (with eminent stupidity) managed just to be out of the way when the blanket was sold; and that it had gone for the very sum she could have afforded, to another woman who would only part with it for six and sixpence--eighteenpence more than the price she had paid for it.
The poor woman wept, and said she had had hard work to "raise" the five shillings, and could not possibly find one and sixpence more. And yet she did want the blanket badly, for she had a boy sick in bed, and his throat was so bad--he suffered a deal from the cold, and there wasn't a decent "rag of a blanket" in her house. I did not quite follow her long story, but I gathered that one and sixpence would put an end to her troubles, and at once offered to fetch her the money.
