“You’ll get no meat with me, boy,” she whispered. “No meat⁠—no meat. It’s the only way to help them. But I’d go and be hanged to help ’em⁠ ⁠… hanged by the neck”⁠—the wind caught her voice and rendered it scarcely audible⁠—“by the neck, boy!”

Wolf pondered to himself upon the contradictory nature of this woman. She would go to the death to put an end to slaughterhouses; and yet she would pack off Mattie and Olwen to God knows what kind of an institution for paupers!

He felt a secret desire to punish her for this inconsistency, and he suddenly said: “It’s really amazingly good of the Otters to take in our friends. To find such a generous heart in a nervous old lady like that makes you think better of the whole human race!”