"For ourselves we care
little for such simple sports: but for the poor folk and the children Yule
should be a season to be remembered for good cheer and merriment through
all their slow, dull year. Poor wretches! I think of their hard life
sometimes, and wonder they don't either drown themselves or massacre us."
"They are like the beasts of the field, Lady Fareham. They have learnt
patience from the habit of suffering. They are born poor, and they die
poor. It is happy for us that they are not learned enough to consider the
inequalities of fortune, or we should have the rising of want against
abundance, a bitterer strife, perhaps, than the strife of adverse creeds,
which made Ireland so bloody a spectacle for the world's wonder thirty
years ago."
"Well, we shall make them all happy this afternoon; and there will be a
supper in the great stone barn which will acquaint them with abundance for
this one evening at least," answered Hyacinth, gaily.
"We are going to play games after dinner!" cried Henriette, from her place
at her father's elbow.
His lordship was the only person who ever reproved her seriously, yet she
loved him best of all her kindred or friends.
"Aunt Angy is going to play hide-and-seek with us.
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