How prettily this stern, composed young woman could put on artful airs of youthfulness when she chose! How she had that firm, far-seeing old man held in position, ready to be twirled round her rosy finger!
Which of us is not held in bondage by some creature of the kind? Unhappy the man who misses that sweet and sacred slavery.
Mr. Cassall wrinkled his grim face not unpleasantly. "Go on; go on. You’re a lawyer, neither more nor less. By the way, who is this--this what’s-the-name--the Doctor, that you mentioned?"
"Oh! he is a very clever young man who has chosen to become a surgeon instead of being a university professor. He’s now out on the North Sea in all this bad weather. He was so much struck with the need of a hospital, that he made up his mind to risk a winter so that he may tell people exactly what he has seen. He doesn’t do things in a half-hearted way.
"What a long, pretty description of Mr. Ferrier. You seem to have taken a good deal of notice of the fortunate youth. Well, proceed."
Marion was a little flushed when she resumed, but her uncle did not observe anything at all unusual.
"Where was I?--Oh, yes! You hold it right to give money in charity to deserving objects. Now these men out at sea were left for years, perhaps for centuries, to live as a class without hope or help. Dear good creatures like my own uncle actually never knew that such people were in existence. They were far worse off than savages who have plantains and pumpkins and cocoanuts, and they were our own good flesh and blood, yet we neglected them."
"So we do the East Enders, and the Lancashire operatives and the dock labourers."
"True. But we are doing better now. Then you see the East End has been discovered a long time, and visitors can walk; but the poor North Sea men were left alone, until lately, by everybody."
"Still, we haven’t come to why _I_ should help them."
"Oh! uncle, you are a commercial man. Look at selfish reasons alone. You know how much we depend on sailors, and you often say the country is so very, very ill-provided with them. And these men are--oh! such splendid seamen. Fancy them staying out for two months with a gale of wind per week, and doing it in little boats about eighty feet long. You should see a hundred of them moving about in mazes and never running into any trouble. Oh! uncle, it _is_ wonderful. Well, now, these men would be all ready for us if we were in national danger. I heard Mr. Fullerton say that hundreds of them are in the Naval Reserve, and as soon as they learned their way about an ironclad, they would take to the work by instinct. There is nothing they don’t understand about the sea, and wind and weather. Would any negro help us? Why, Lord Wolseley told your friend Sir James Roche that a thousand Fantees ran away from fifty painted men of some other tribe; and Lord Wolseley said that you can only make a negro of that sort defend himself by telling him that he will die if he runs away. You wouldn’t neglect our own men who are so brave. Why they might have to defend London, where all your money is, and they would do it too." (Oh! the artful minx!) "And we send missions to nasty, brutal Fantees who run away from enemies, and we leave our own splendid creatures far worse off than dogs."