" said Newton. "It's no use transplanting
them in this weather, but I'll send you a basket in October. You
should come down to Newton and see our ferns. We think we're very
pretty, but because we're so near, nobody comes to see us." Then he
fell a-talking with Mary Bonner, and stayed at the villa nearly all
the afternoon. For a moment or two he was alone with Clarissa, and at
once expressed his admiration. "I don't think I ever saw such perfect
beauty as your cousin's," he said.

"She is handsome."

"And then she is so fair, whereas everybody expects to see dark eyes
and black hair come from the West Indies."

"But Mary wasn't born there."

"That doesn't matter. The mind doesn't travel back as far as that.
A negro should be black, and an American thin, and a French woman
should have her hair dragged up by the roots, and a German should be
broad-faced, and a Scotchman red-haired,--and a West Indian beauty
should be dark and languishing."

"I'll tell her you say so, and perhaps she'll have herself altered."

"Whatever you do, don't let her be altered," said Mr. Newton. "She
can't be changed for the better."

"I am quite sure he is over head and ears in love," said Clarissa to
Patience that evening.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CHESHIRE CHEESE.

"Labour is the salt of the earth, and Capital is the sworn foe to
Labour." Hear, hear, hear, with the clattering of many glasses, and
the smashing of certain pipes! Then the orator went on. "That Labour
should be the salt of the earth has been the purpose of a beneficent
Creator;--that Capital should be the foe to Labour has been
man's handywork. The one is an eternal decree, which nothing can
change,--which neither the good nor the evil done by man can affect.
The other is an evil ordinance, the fruit of man's ignorance and
within the scope of man's intellect to annul." Mr. Ontario Moggs
was the orator, and he was at this moment addressing a crowd of
sympathising friends in the large front parlour of the Cheshire
Cheese. Of all those who were listening to Ontario Moggs there was
not probably one who had reached a higher grade in commerce than that
of an artizan working for weekly wages;--but Mr. Moggs was especially
endeared to them because he was not an artizan working for weekly
wages, but himself a capitalist. His father was a master bootmaker on
a great scale;--for none stood much higher in the West-end trade than
Booby and Moggs; and it was known that Ontario was