Sheaves - 1907 Author:E. F. Benson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III PEGGY RYE, probably one of the happiest people in London, was unquestionably one of the busiest, and, as is the habit of really busy people, could... more » always find time for everything. She pursued her myriad schemes of philanthropy and kindness not only with a sense of duty, but brought to them a lively and genuine interest that made unshrinkable homespuns, innocuous wallpapers, unphosphorescent matches and leadless glaze things in themselves attractive and absorbing. If she was not opening a bazaar she was triumphantly closing some factory in which the conditions of work were injurious to the employes; and there were but few days when she was in town on which her great barrack of a house in Pall-Mail was not open to something of an alleviating and charitable nature. The house, in fact, as Hugh had once remarked, was a sort of Clapham Junction of philanthropy, and relief trains ran screaming through it in all directions and at the shortest possible intervals, while she, like a general pointsman for all the lines, tugged at her levers and sent the trains all on their various ways. Her levers, it may be remarked, were of various kinds, and it was firstly her own energies, her position, her time, her wealth that she cheerfully and eagerly devoted to her charitable deeds; but secondly she used the time, position, and money of her friends, plundering them with the utmost avidity and merciless- ness. She insisted on their putting up new wallpapers —even though those they had were still recent—which, though perhaps ugly, were not stained with the bloodof work-people. She made them buy homespun and tweeds which they did not want in order that Irish peasants should not want either; and she compelled them to load their dinner-tables with new services, which it was possible to eat ...« less