Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/94

'I made a lot by pattern for an Irish gent, sir.'

'Well, then, we'll send you some Norway patterns, and some golden pheasant and parrot feathers. We're going to Norway this summer you know, Lancelot———'

Tregarva looked up with a quaint, solemn hesitation.

'If you please, gentlemen, you'll forgive a man's conscience.'

'Well?'

'But I'd not like to be a party to the making of Norway flies.'

'Here's a Protectionist, with a vengeance!' laughed the colonel. 'Do you want to keep all us fishermen in England? eh? to fee English keepers?'

'No, sir. There's pretty fishing in Norway, I hear, and poor folk that want money more than we keepers. God knows we get too much—we that hang about great houses and serve great folks, pleasure—you toss the money down our throats, without our deserving it; and we spend it as we get it—a deal too fast—while hard-working labourers are starving.'

'And yet you would keep us in England?'

'Would God I could!'

'Why then, my good fellow?' asked Lancelot, who was getting intensely interested with the calm self-possessed earnestness of the man, and longed to draw him out.

The colonel yawned.