Shirley

instance?«
    »Do? – ye can do naught mich, poor young lass! Ye've gi'en your brass: ye've done well. If ye could transport your tenant, Mr. Moore, to Botany Bay, ye'd happen do better. Folks hate him.«
    »William, for shame!« exclaimed Caroline, warmly. »If folks
do
hate him, it is to their disgrace, not his. Mr. Moore himself hates nobody; he only wants to do his duty, and maintain his rights: you are wrong to talk so!«
    »I talk as I think. He has a cold, unfeeling heart, yond' Moore.«
    »But,« interposed Shirley, »supposing Moore was driven from the country, and his mill razed to the ground, would people have more work?«
    »They'd have less. I know that, and they know that; and there is many an honest lad driven desperate by the certainty that whichever way he turns, he cannot better himself, and there is dishonest men plenty to guide them to the devil: scoundrels that reckons to be the ›people's friends,‹ and that knows naught about the people, and is as insincere as Lucifer. I've lived aboon forty year in the world, and I believe that ›the people‹ will never have any true friends but theirsel'n, and them two or three good folk i' different stations, that is friends to all the world. Human natur', taking it i' th' lump, is naught but selfishness. It is but excessive few; it is but just an exception here and there, now and then, sich as ye two young 'uns and me, that being in a different sphere, can understand t' one t' other, and be friends wi'-out slavishness o' one hand, or pride o' t' other. Them that reckons to be friends to a lower class than their own fro' political motives is never to be trusted: they always try to make their inferiors tools. For my own part, I will neither be patronized nor misled for no man's pleasure. I've had overtures made to me lately that I saw were treacherous, and I flung 'em back i' the faces o' them that offered 'em.«
    »You won't tell us what overtures?«
    »I will not: it would do no good; it would mak' no difference: them they concerned can look after theirsel'n.«
    »Ay, we'se look after wersel'n,« said another voice. Joe Scott had sauntered forth from the church to get a breath of fresh air, and there he stood.
    »I'll warrant
ye,
Joe,« observed William, smiling.
    »And I'll warrant my maister,« was the answer. »Young ladies,« continued Joe, assuming a lordly air, »ye'd better go into th' house.«
    »I wonder what for?« inquired Shirley, to whom the overlooker's somewhat pragmatical manners were familiar, and who was often at war with him; for Joe, holding supercilious theories about women in general, resented greatly, in his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master's mill being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had felt as wormwood and gall, certain business-visits of the heiress to the Hollow's counting-house.
    »Because there is naught agate that fits women to be consarned in.«
    »Indeed! There is prayer and preaching agate in that church; are we not concerned in that?«
    »Ye have been present neither at the prayer nor preaching, ma'am, if I have observed aright. What I alluded to was politics: William Farren, here, was touching on that subject, if I'm not mista'en.«
    »Well, what then? Politics are our habitual study, Joe. Do you know I see a newspaper every day, and two of a Sunday?«
    »I should think you'll read the marriages, probably, Miss, and the murders, and the accidents, and sich like?«
    »I read the leading articles, Joe, and the foreign intelligence, and I look over the market prices: in short, I read just what gentlemen read.«
    Joe looked as if he thought this talk was like the chattering of a pie. He replied to it, by a disdainful silence.
    »Joe,« continued Miss Keeldar, »I never yet could ascertain properly, whether you are a Whig or a Tory: pray which party has the honour of your alliance?«
    »It is rayther difficult to explain where you are sure not to be understood,« was Joe's haughty response; »but, as to being a Tory, I'd as soon be an old woman, or a young one, which is a more flimsier article still. It is the Tories that carries on the war and ruins trade; and, if I be of any party – though political parties is all nonsense – I'm of that which is most favourable to peace, and, by consequence, to the mercantile interests of this here land.«
    »So am I, Joe,« replied Shirley, who had rather a pleasure in teazing the overlooker, by persisting in talking on subjects with which he opined