He was not deceived by the poor. He knew they came and
sponged on him, and whined to him, the worse sort; the majority,
luckily for him, were much too proud to ask for anything, much too
independent to come knocking at his door. But in Beldover, as
everywhere else, there were the whining, parasitic, foul human beings
who come crawling after charity, and feeding on the living body of the
public like lice. A kind of fire would go over Christiana Crich's
brain, as she saw two more pale-faced, creeping women in objectionable
black clothes, cringing lugubriously up the drive to the door. She
wanted to set the dogs on them, 'Hi Rip! Hi Ring! Ranger! At 'em boys,
set 'em off.' But Crowther, the butler, with all the rest of the
servants, was Mr Crich's man. Nevertheless, when her husband was away,
she would come down like a wolf on the crawling supplicants;
'What do you people want? There is nothing for you here. You have no
business on the drive at all. Simpson, drive them away and let no more
of them through the gate.
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