ay about his friend Hunsden--anything sweet?"

"He called you a treacherous villain."

"Oh, he hardly knows me yet! I'm one of those shy people who don't come
out all at once, and he is only just beginning to make my acquaintance,
but he'll find I've some good qualities--excellent ones! The Hunsdens
were always unrivalled at tracking a rascal; a downright, dishonourable
villain is their natural prey--they could not keep off him wherever
they met him; you used the word pragmatical just now--that word is the
property of our family; it has been applied to us from generation to
generation; we have fine noses for abuses; we scent a scoundrel a mile
off; we are reformers born, radical reformers; and it was impossible for
me to live in the same town with Crimsworth, to come into weekly contact
with him, to witness some of his conduct to you (for whom personally
I care nothing; I only consider the brutal injustice with which he
violated your natural claim to equality)--I say it was impossible for
me to be thus situated and not feel the angel or the demon of my race
at work within me. I followed my instinct, opposed a tyrant, and broke a
chain."

Now this speech interested me much, both because it brought out
Hunsden's character, and because it explained his motives; it interested
me so much that I forgot to reply to it, and sat silent, pondering over
a throng of ideas it had suggested.

"Are you grateful to me?" he asked, presently.

In fact I was grateful, or almost so, and I believe I half liked him at
the moment, notwithstanding his proviso that what he had done was not
out of regard for me. But human nature is perverse. Impossible to answer
his blunt question in the affirmative, so I disclaimed all tendency
to gratitude, and advised him if he expected any reward for his
championship, to look for it in a better world, as he was not likely
to meet with it here. In reply he termed me "a dry-hearted aristocratic
scamp," whereupon I again charged him with having taken the bread out of
my mouth.

"Your bread was dirty, man!" cried Hunsden--"dirty and unwholesome!
It came through the hands of a tyrant, for I tell you Crimsworth is a
tyrant,--a tyrant to his workpeople, a tyrant to his clerks, and will
some day be a tyrant to his wife."

"Nonsense! bread is bread, and a salary is a salary. I've lost mine, and
through your means."

"There's sense in what you say, after all," rejoined Hunsden. "I must
say I am rather agreea