Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure

R.M. Ballantyne

"Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished"

Chapter One.

An Accident and some of its Curious Results.

Every one has heard of those ponies—those shaggy, chubby, innocent-looking little creatures—for which the world is indebted, we suppose, to Shetland.

Well, once on a time, one of the most innocent-looking, chubbiest, and shaggiest of Shetland ponies—a dark brown one—stood at the door of a mansion in the west-end of London.

It was attached to a wickerwork vehicle which resembled a large clothes-basket on small wheels. We do not mean, of course, that the pony was affectionately attached to it. No; the attachment was involuntary and unavoidable, by reason of a brand-new yellow leather harness with brass buckles. It objected to the attachment, obviously, for it sidled this way, and straddled that way, and whisked its enormous little tail, and tossed its rotund little head, and stamped its ridiculously small feet; and champed its miniature bit, as if it had been a war-horse of the largest size, fit to carry a Wallace, a Bruce, or a Richard of the Lion-heart, into the midst of raging battle.

And no wonder; for many months had not elapsed since that brown creature had kicked up its little heels, and twirled its tail, and shaken its shaggy mane in all the wild exuberance of early youth and unfettered freedom on the heather hills of its native island.

In the four-wheeled basket sat a little girl whom it is useless to describe as beautiful. She was far beyond that! Her delicate colour, her little straight nose, her sparkling teeth, her rosebud of a mouth, her enormous blue eyes, and floods of yellow hair—pooh! these are not worth mentioning in the same sentence with her expression. It was that which carried all before it, and swept up the adoration of man-and-woman-kind as with the besom of fascination.

She was the only child of Sir Richard Brandon. Sir Richard was a knight and a widower. He was knighted, not because of personal merit, but because he had been mayor of some place, sometime or other, when some one connected with royalty had something important to do with it! Little Diana was all that this knight and widower had on earth to care for, except, of course, his horses and dogs, and guns, and club, and food. He was very particular as to his food. Not that he was an epicure, or a gourmand, or luxurious, or a hard drinker, or anything of that sort—by no means. He could rough it, (so he said), as well as any man, and put up with whatever chanced to be going, but, when there was no occasion for roughing it, he did like to see things well cooked and nicely served; and wine, you know, was not worth drinking—positively nauseous—if it was not of the best.

Sir Richard was a poor man—a very poor man. He had only five thousand a year—a mere pittance; and he managed this sum in such a peculiar way that he never had anything wherewith to help a struggling friend, or to give to the poor, or to assist the various religious and charitable institutions by which he was surrounded; while at certain intervals in the year he experienced exasperating difficulty in meeting the demands of those torments to society, the tradespeople—people who ought to be ashamed of themselves for not being willing to supply the nobility and gentry with food and clothing gratuitously! Moreover, Sir Richard never by any chance laid anything by.

Standing by the pony’s head, and making tender efforts to restrain his waywardness, stood a boy—a street boy—a city Arab. To a Londoner any description of this boy would be superfluous, but it may be well to state, for the benefit of the world at large, that the class to which he belonged embodies within its pale the quintessence of rollicking mischief, and the sublimate of consummate insolence.

This remarkable boy was afflicted with a species of dance—not that of Saint Vitus, but a sort of double-shuffle, with a stamp of the right foot at the end—in which he was prone to indulge, consciously and unconsciously, at all times, and the tendency to which he sometimes found it difficult to resist. He was beginning to hum the sharply-defined air to which he was in the habit of performing this dance, when little Diana said, in a silvery voice quite in keeping with her beauty—

“Let go his head, boy; I’m quite sure that he cannot bear restraint.”

It may be remarked here that little Di was probably a good judge on that point, being herself nearly incapable of bearing restraint.

“I’d better not, miss,” replied the boy with profound respect in tone and manner, for he had yet to be paid for the job; “he seems raither frisky, an’ might take a fancy to bolt, you know.”

“Let his head go, I say!” returned Miss Diana with a flashing of the blue eyes, and a pursing of the rosebud mouth that proved her to be one of Adam’s race after all.

“Vell, now, don’t you think,” rejoined the boy, in an expostulating tone, “that it would be as veil to vait for the guv’nor before givin’ ’im ’is ’ead?”

“Do as I bid you, sir!” said Di, drawing herself up like an empress.

Still the street boy held the pony’s head, and it is probable that he would have come off the victor in this controversy, had not Diana’s dignified action given to the reins which she held a jerk. The brown pony, deeming this full permission to go on, went off with a bound that overturned the boy, and caused the fore-wheel to strike him on the leg as it passed.

Springing up with the intention of giving chase to the runaway, the little fellow again fell, with a sharp cry of pain, for his leg was broken.

At the same moment Sir Richard Brandon issued from the door of his mansion leisurely, and with an air of calm serenity, pulling on his gloves. It was one of the knight’s maxims that, under all circumstances, a gentleman should maintain an appearance of imperturbable serenity. When, however, he suddenly beheld the street boy falling, and his daughter standing up in her wickerwork chariot, holding on to the brown pony like an Amazon warrior of ancient times, his maxim somehow evaporated. His serenity vanished. So did his hat as he bounded from beneath it, and left it far behind in his mad and hopeless career after the runaway.

A policeman, coming up just as Sir Richard disappeared, went to the assistance of the street boy.

“Not much hurt, youngster,” he said kindly, as he observed that the boy was very pale, and seemed to be struggling hard to repress his feelings.

“Vell, p’raps I is an’ p’raps I ain’t, Bobby,” replied the boy with an unsuccessful attempt at a smile, for he felt safe to chaff or insult his foe in the circumstances, “but vether hurt or not it vont much matter to you, vill it?”

He fainted as he spoke, and the look of half-humorous impudence, as well as that of pain, gave place to an expression of infantine repose.

The policeman was so struck by the unusual sight of a street boy looking innocent and unconscious, that he stooped and raised him quite tenderly in his arms.

“You’d better carry him in here,” said Sir Richard Brandon’s butler, who had come out. “I saw it ’appen, and suspect he must be a good deal damaged.”

Sir Richard’s footman backing the invitation, the boy was carried into the house accordingly, laid on the housemaid’s bed, and attended to by the cook, while the policeman went out to look after the runaways.

“Oh! what ever shall we do?” exclaimed the cook, as the boy showed symptoms of returning consciousness.

“Send for the doctor,” suggested the housemaid.

“No,” said the butler, “send for a cab, and ’ave the boy sent home. I fear that master will blame me for givin’ way to my feelin’s, and won’t thank me for bringin’ ’im in here. You know he is rather averse to the lower orders. Besides, the poor boy will be better attended to at ’ome, no doubt. I dare say you’d like to go ’ome, wouldn’t you?” he said, observing that the boy was looking at him with a rather curious expression.

“I dessay I should, if I could,” he answered, with a mingled glance of mischief and pain, “but if you’ll undertake to carry me, old cock, I’ll be ’appy to go.”

“I’ll send you in a cab, my poor boy,” returned the butler, “and git a cabman as I’m acquainted with to take care of you.”

“All right! go a’ead, ye cripples,” returned the boy, as the cook approached him with a cup of warm soup.

“Oh! ain’t it prime!” he said, opening his eyes very wide indeed, and smacking his lips. “I think I’ll go in for a smashed pin every day o’ my life for a drop o’ that stuff. Surely it must be wot they drinks in ’eaven! Have ’ee got much more o’ the same on ’and?”

“Never mind, but you drink away while you’ve got the chance,” replied the amiable cook; “there’s the cab coming, so you’ve no time to lose.”

“Vell, I am sorry I ain’t able to ’old more, an’ my pockets wont ’old it neither, bein’ the wuss for wear. Thankee, missus.”

He managed, by a strong effort, to dispose of a little more soup before the cab drew up.

“Where do you live?” asked the butler, as he placed the boy carefully in the bottom of the cab with his unkempt head resting on a hassock, which he gave him to understand was a parting gift from the housemaid.

“Vere do I live?” he repeated. “Vy, mostly in the streets; my last ’ome was a sugar barrel, the one before was a donkey-cart, but I do sometimes condescend to wisit my parents in their mansion ’ouse in Vitechapel.”

“And what is your name? Sir Richard may wish to inquire for you—perhaps.”

“May he? Oh! I’m sorry I ain’t got my card to leave, but you just tell him, John—is it, or Thomas?—Ah! Thomas. I knowed it couldn’t ’elp to be one or t’other;—you just tell your master that my name is Robert, better known as Bobby, Frog. But I’ve lots of aliases, if that name don’t please ’im. Good-bye, Thomas. Farewell, and if for ever, then—you know the rest o’ the quotation, if your eddication’s not bin neglected, w’ich is probable it was. Oh! by the way. This ’assik is the gift of the ’ouse-maid? You observe the answer, cabby, in case you and I may differ about it ’ereafter.”

“Yes,” said the amused butler, “a gift from Jessie.”

“Ah!—jus’ so. An’ she’s tender-’earted an’ on’y fifteen. Wots ’er tother name? Summers, eh? Vell, it’s prettier than Vinters. Tell ’er I’ll not forget ’er. Now, cabman—’ome!”

A few minutes more, and Bobby Frog was on his way to the mansion in Whitechapel, highly delighted with his recent feast, but suffering extremely from his broken limb.

Meanwhile, the brown pony—having passed a bold costermonger, who stood shouting defiance at it, and waving both arms till it was close on him, when he stepped quickly out of its way—eluded a dray-man, and entered on a fine sweep of street, where there seemed to be no obstruction worth mentioning. By that time it had left the agonised father far behind.

The day was fine; the air bracing. The utmost strength of poor little Diana, and she applied it well, made no impression whatever on the pony’s tough mouth. Influences of every kind were favourable. On the illogical principle, probably, that being “in for a penny” justified being “in for a pound,” the pony laid himself out for a glorious run. He warmed to his work, caused the dust to fly, and the clothes-basket to advance with irregular bounds and swayings as he scampered along, driving many little dogs wild with delight, and two or three cats mad with fear. Gradually he drew towards the more populous streets, and here, of course, the efforts on the part of the public to arrest him became more frequent, also more decided, though not more successful. At last an inanimate object effected what man and boy had failed to accomplish.

In a wild effort to elude a demonstrative cabman near the corner of one of the main thoroughfares, the brown pony brought the wheels of the vehicle into collision with a lamp-post. That lamp-post went down before the shock like a tall head of grain before the sickle. The front wheels doubled up into a sudden embrace, broke loose, and went across the road, one into a greengrocer’s shop, the other into a chemist’s window. Thus diversely end many careers that begin on a footing of equality! The hind-wheels went careering along the road like a new species of bicycle, until brought up by a donkey-cart, while the basket chariot rolled itself violently round the lamp-post, like a shattered remnant, as if resolved, before perishing, to strangle the author of all the mischief. As to the pony, it stopped, and seemed surprised at first by the unexpected finale, but the look quickly changed—or appeared to change—to one of calm contentment as it surveyed the ruin.

But what of the fair little charioteer? Truly, in regard to her, a miracle, or something little short of one, had occurred. The doctrine that extremes meet contains much truth in it—truth which is illustrated and exemplified more frequently, we think, than is generally supposed. A tremendous accident is often much less damaging to the person who experiences it than a slight one. In little Diana’s case, the extremes had met, and the result was absolute safety. She was shot out of her basket carriage after the manner of a sky-rocket, but the impulse was so effective that, instead of causing her to fall on her head and break her pretty little neck, it made her perform a complete somersault, and alight upon her feet. Moreover, the spot on which she alighted was opportune, as well as admirably suited to the circumstances.

At the moment, ignorant of what was about to happen, police-constable Number 666—we are not quite sure of what division—in all the plenitude of power, and blue, and six-feet-two, approached the end of a street entering at right angles to the one down which our little heroine had flown. He was a superb specimen of humanity, this constable, with a chest and shoulders like Hercules, and the figure of Apollo. He turned the corner just as the child had completed her somersault, and received her two little feet fairly in the centre of his broad breast, driving him flat on his back more effectively than could have been done by the best prize-fighter in England!

Number 666 proved a most effectual buffer, for Di, after planting her blow on his chest, sat plump down on his stomach, off which she sprang in an agony of consternation, exclaiming—

“Oh! I have killed him! I’ve killed him!” and burst into tears.

“No, my little lady,” said Number 666, as he rose with one or two coughs and replaced his helmet, “you’ve not quite done for me, though you’ve come nearer the mark than any man has ever yet accomplished. Come, now, what can I do for you? You’re not hurt, I hope?”

This sally was received with a laugh, almost amounting to a cheer, by the half-horrified crowd which had quickly assembled to witness, as it expected, a fatal accident.

“Hurt? oh! no, I’m not hurt,” exclaimed Di, while tears still converted her eyes into blue lakelets as she looked anxiously up in the face of Number 666; “but I’m quite sure you must be hurt—awfully. I’m so sorry! Indeed I am, for I didn’t mean to knock you down.”

This also was received by the crowd with a hearty laugh, while Number 666 sought to comfort the child by earnestly assuring her that he was not hurt in the least—only a little stunned at first, but that was quite gone.

“Wot does she mean by knockin’ of ’im down?” asked a small butcher’s boy, who had come on the scene just too late, of a small baker’s boy who had, happily, been there from the beginning.

“She means wot she says,” replied the small baker’s boy with the dignified reticence of superior knowledge, “she knocked the constable down.”

“Wot! a leetle gurl knock a six-foot bobby down?—walk-er!”

“Very good; you’ve no call to b’lieve it unless you like,” replied the baker’s boy, with a look of pity at the unbelieving butcher, “but she did it, though—an’ that’s six month with ’ard labour, if it ain’t five year.”

At this point the crowd opened up to let a maniac enter. He was breathless, hatless, moist, and frantic.

“My child! my darling! my dear Di!” he gasped.

“Papa!” responded Diana, with a little scream, and, leaping into his arms, grasped him in a genuine hug.

“Oh! I say,” whispered the small butcher, “it’s a melly-drammy—all for nuffin!”

“My!” responded the small baker, with a solemn look, “won’t the Lord left-tenant be down on ’em for play-actin’ without a licence, just!”

“Is the pony killed?” inquired Sir Richard, recovering himself.

“Not in the least, sir. ’Ere ’e is, sir; all alive an’ kickin’,” answered the small butcher, delighted to have the chance of making himself offensively useful, “but the hinsurance offices wouldn’t ’ave the clo’se-baskit at no price. Shall I order up the remains of your carriage, sir?”

“Oh! I’m so glad he’s not dead,” said Diana, looking hastily up, “but this policeman was nearly killed, and I did it! He saved my life, papa.”

A chorus of voices here explained to Sir Richard how Number 666 had come up in the nick of time to receive the flying child upon his bosom.

“I am deeply grateful to you,” said the knight, turning to the constable, and extending his hand, which the latter shook modestly while disclaiming any merit for having merely performed his duty—he might say, involuntarily.

“Will you come to my house?” said Sir Richard. “Here is my card. I should like to see you again, and pray, see that some one looks after my pony and—”

“And the remains,” suggested the small butcher, seeing that Sir Richard hesitated.

“Be so good as to call a cab,” said Sir Richard in a general way to any one who chose to obey.

“Here you are, sir!” cried a peculiarly sharp cabby, who, correctly judging from the state of affairs that his services would be required, had drawn near to bide his time.

Sir Richard and his little daughter got in and were driven home, leaving Number 666 to look after the pony and the remains.

Thus curiously were introduced to each other some of the characters in our tale.

Chapter Two.

The Irresistible Power of Love.

Need we remark that there was a great deal of embracing on the part of Di and her nurse when the former returned home? The child was an affectionate creature as well as passionate. The nurse, Mrs Screwbury, was also affectionate without being passionate. Poor Diana had never known a mother’s love or care; but good, steady, stout Mrs Screwbury did what in her lay to fill the place of mother.

Sir Richard filled the place of father pretty much as a lamp-post might have done had it owned a child. He illuminated her to some extent—explained things in general, stiffly, and shed a feeble ray around himself; but his light did not extend far. He was proud of her, however, and very fond of her—when good. When not good, he was—or rather had been—in the habit of dismissing her to the nursery.

Nevertheless, the child exercised very considerable and ever-increasing influence over her father; for, although stiff, the knight was by no means destitute of natural affection, and sometimes observed, with moist eyes, strong traces of resemblance to his lost wife in the beautiful child. Indeed, as years advanced, he became a more and more obedient father, and was obviously on the high road to abject slavery.

“Papa,” said Di, while they were at luncheon that day, not long after the accident, “I am so sorry for that poor policeman. It seems such a dreadful thing to have actually jumped upon him! and oh! you should have heard his poor head hit the pavement, and seen his pretty helmet go spinning along like a boy’s top, ever so far. I wonder it didn’t kill him. I’m so sorry.”

Di emphasised her sorrow by laughing, for she had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and the memory of the spinning helmet was strong upon her just then.

“It must indeed have been an unpleasant blow,” replied Sir Richard, gravely, “but then, dear, you couldn’t help it, you know—and I dare say he is none the worse for it now. Men like him are not easily injured. I fear we cannot say as much for the boy who was holding the pony.”

“Oh! I quite forgot about him,” exclaimed Di; “the naughty boy! he wouldn’t let go the pony’s reins when I bid him, but I saw he tumbled down when we set off.”

“Yes, he has been somewhat severely punished, I fear, for his disobedience. His leg had been broken. Is it not so, Balls?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the butler, “’e ’as ’ad ’is—”

Balls got no farther, for Diana, who had been struck dumb for the moment by the news, recovered herself.

“His leg broken!” she exclaimed with a look of consternation; “Oh! the poor, poor boy!—the dear boy! and it was me did that too, as well as knocking down the poor policeman!”

There is no saying to what lengths the remorseful child would have gone in the way of self-condemnation if her father had not turned her thoughts from herself by asking what had been done for the boy.

“We sent ’im ’ome, sir, in a cab.”

“I’m afraid that was a little too prompt,” returned the knight thoughtfully. “A broken leg requires careful treatment, I suppose. You should have had him into the house, and sent for a doctor.”

Balls coughed. He was slightly chagrined to find that the violation of his own humane feelings had been needless, and that his attempt to do as he thought his master would have wished was in vain.

“I thought, Sir Richard, that you didn’t like the lower orders to go about the ’ouse more—”

Again little Di interrupted the butler by asking excitedly where the boy’s home was.

“In the neighbour’ood of W’itechapel, Miss Di.”

“Then, papa, we will go straight off to see him,” said the child, in the tone of one whose mind is fully made up. “You and I shall go together—won’t we? good papa!”

“That will do, Balls, you may go. No, my dear Di, I think we had better not. I will write to one of the city missionaries whom I know, and ask him to—”

“No, but, papa—dear papa, we must go. The city missionary could never say how very, very sorry I am that he should have broken his leg while helping me. And then I should so like to sit by him and tell him stories, and give him his soup and gruel, and read to him. Poor, poor boy, we must go, papa, won’t you?”

“Not to-day, dear. It is impossible to go to-day. There, now, don’t begin to cry. Perhaps—perhaps to-morrow—but think, my love; you have no idea how dirty—how very nasty—the places are in which our lower orders live.”

“Oh! yes I have,” said Di eagerly. “Haven’t I seen our nursery on cleaning days?”

A faint flicker of a smile passed over the knight’s countenance.

“True, darling, but the places are far, far dirtier than that. Then the smells. Oh! they are very dreadful—”

“What—worse than we have when there’s cabbage for dinner?”

“Yes, much worse than that.”

“I don’t care, papa. We must go to see the boy—the poor, poor boy, in spite of dirt and smells. And then, you know—let me up on your knee and I’ll tell you all about it. There! Well, then, you know, I’d tidy the room up, and even wash it a little. Oh, you can’t think how nicely I washed up my doll’s room—her corner, you know,—that day when I spilt all her soup in trying to feed her, and then, while trying to wipe it up, I accidentally burst her, and all her inside came out—the sawdust, I mean. It was the worst mess I ever made, but I cleaned it up as well as Jessie herself could have done—so nurse said.”

“But the messes down in Whitechapel are much worse than you have described, dear,” expostulated the parent, who felt that his powers of resistance were going.

“So much the better, papa,” replied Di, kissing her sire’s lethargic visage. “I should like so much to try if I could clean up something worse than my doll’s room. And you’ve promised, you know.”

“No—only said ‘perhaps,’” returned Sir Richard quickly.

“Well, that’s the same thing; and now that it’s all nicely settled, I’ll go and see nurse. Good-bye, papa.”

“Good-bye, dear,” returned the knight, resigning himself to his fate and the newspaper.

Chapter Three.

Poverty Manages to Board out her Infant for Nothing.

On the night of the day about which we have been writing, a woman, dressed in “unwomanly rags” crept out of the shadow of the houses near London Bridge. She was a thin, middle-aged woman, with a countenance from which sorrow, suffering, and sin had not been able to obliterate entirely the traces of beauty. She carried a bundle in her arms which was easily recognisable as a baby, from the careful and affectionate manner in which the woman’s thin, out-spread fingers grasped it.

Hurrying on to the bridge till she reached the middle of one of the arches, she paused and looked over. The Thames was black and gurgling, for it was intensely dark, and the tide half ebb at the time. The turbid waters chafed noisily on the stone piers as if the sins and sorrows of the great city had been somehow communicated to them.

But the distance from the parapet to the surface of the stream was great. It seemed awful in the woman’s eyes. She shuddered and drew back.

“Oh! for courage—only for one minute!” she murmured, clasping the bundle closer to her breast.

The action drew off a corner of the scanty rag which she called a shawl, and revealed a small and round, yet exceedingly thin face, the black eyes of which seemed to gaze in solemn wonder at the scene of darkness visible which was revealed. The woman stood between two lamps in the darkest place she could find, but enough of light reached her to glitter in the baby’s solemn eyes as they met her gaze, and it made a pitiful attempt to smile as it recognised its mother.

“God help me! I can’t,” muttered the woman with a shiver, as if an ice-block had touched her heart.

She drew the rag hastily over the baby’s head again, pressed it closer to her breast, retraced her steps, and dived into the shadows from which she had emerged.

This was one of the “lower orders” to whom Sir Richard Brandon had such an objection, whom he found it, he said, so difficult to deal with, (no wonder, for he never tried to deal with them at all, in any sense worthy of the name), and whom it was, he said, useless to assist, because all he could do in such a vast accumulation of poverty would be a mere drop in the bucket. Hence Sir Richard thought it best to keep the drop in his pocket where it could be felt and do good—at least to himself, rather than dissipate it in an almost empty bucket. The bucket, however, was not quite empty—thanks to a few thousands of people who differed from the knight upon that point.

The thin woman hastened through the streets as regardless of passers-by as they were of her, until she reached the neighbourhood of Commercial Street, Spitalfields.

Here she paused and looked anxiously round her. She had left the main thoroughfare, and the spot on which she stood was dimly lighted. Whatever she looked or waited for, did not, however, soon appear, for she stood under a lamp-post, muttering to herself, “I must git rid of it. Better to do so than see it starved to death before my eyes.”

Presently a foot-fall was heard, and a man drew near. The woman gazed intently into his face. It was not a pleasant face. There was a scowl on it. She drew back and let him pass. Then several women passed, but she took no notice of them. Then another man appeared. His face seemed a jolly one. The woman stepped forward at once and confronted him.

“Please, sir,” she began, but the man was too sharp for her.

“Come now—you’ve brought out that baby on purpose to humbug people with it. Don’t fancy you’ll throw dust in my eyes. I’m too old a cock for that. Don’t you know that you’re breaking the law by begging?”

“I’m not begging,” retorted the woman, almost fiercely.

“Oh! indeed. Why do you stop me, then?”

“I merely wished to ask if your name is Thompson.”

“Ah hem!” ejaculated the man with a broad grin, “well no, madam, my name is not Thompson.”

“Well, then,” rejoined the woman, still indignantly, “you may move on.”

She had used an expression all too familiar to herself, and the man, obeying the order with a bow and a mocking laugh, disappeared like those who had gone before him.

For some time no one else appeared save a policeman. When he approached, the woman went past him down the street, as if bent on some business, but when he was out of sight she returned to the old spot, which was near the entrance to an alley.

At last the woman’s patience was rewarded by the sight of a burly little elderly man, whose face of benignity was unmistakably genuine. Remembering the previous man’s reference to the baby, she covered it up carefully, and held it more like a bundle.

Stepping up to the newcomer at once, she put the same question as to name, and also asked if he lived in Russell Square.

“No, my good woman,” replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, “my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter—Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but,” he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, “why do you ask my name and address?”

The woman gave an almost hysterical laugh at having been so successful in her somewhat clumsy scheme, and, without uttering another word, darted down the alley. She passed rapidly round by a back way to another point of the same street she had left—well ahead of the spot where she had stood so long and so patiently that night. Here she suddenly uncovered the baby’s face and kissed it passionately for a few moments. Then, wrapping it in the ragged shawl, with its little head out, she laid it on the middle of the footpath full in the light of a lamp, and retired to await the result.

When the woman rushed away, as above related, Mr Samuel Twitter stood for some minutes rooted to the spot, lost in amazement. He was found in that condition by the returning policeman.

“Constable,” said he, cocking his hat to one side the better to scratch his bald head, “there are strange people in this region.”

“Indeed there are, sir.”

“Yes, but I mean very strange people.”

“Well, sir, if you insist on it, I won’t deny that some of them are very strange.”

“Yes, well—good-night, constable,” said Mr Twitter, moving slowly forward in a mystified state of mind, while the guardian of the night continued his rounds, thinking to himself that he had just parted from one of the very strangest of the people.

Suddenly Samuel Twitter came to a full stop, for there lay the small baby gazing at him with its solemn eyes, apparently quite indifferent to the hardness and coldness of its bed of stone.

“Abandoned!” gasped the burly little man.

Whether Mr Twitter referred to the infant’s moral character, or to its being shamefully forsaken, we cannot now prove, but he instantly caught the bundle in his arms and gazed at it. Possibly his gaze may have been too intense, for the mild little creature opened a small mouth that bore no proportion whatever to the eyes, and attempted to cry, but the attempt was a failure. It had not strength to cry.

The burly little man’s soul was touched to the centre by the sight. He kissed the baby’s forehead, pressed it to his ample breast, and hurried away. If he had taken time to think he might have gone to a police-office, or a night refuge, or some such haven of rest for the weary, but when Twitter’s feelings were touched he became a man of impulse. He did not take time to think—except to the extent that, on reaching the main thoroughfare, he hailed a cab and was driven home.

The poor mother had followed him with the intention of seeing him home. Of course the cab put an end to that. She felt comparatively easy, however, knowing, as she did, that her child was in the keeping of “Twitter, Slime and —.” That was quite enough to enable her to trace Mr Twitter out. Comforting herself as well as she could with this reflection, she sat down in a dark corner on a cold door-step, and, covering her face with both hands, wept as though her heart would break.

Gradually her sobs subsided, and, rising, she hurried away, shivering with cold, for her thin cotton dress was a poor protection against the night chills, and her ragged shawl was—gone with the baby.

In a few minutes she reached a part of the Whitechapel district where some of the deepest poverty and wretchedness in London is to be found. Turning into a labyrinth of small streets and alleys, she paused in the neighbourhood of the court in which was her home—if such it could be called.

“Is it worth while going back to him?” she muttered. “He nearly killed baby, and it wouldn’t take much to make him kill me. And oh! he was so different—once!”

While she stood irresolute, the man of whom she spoke chanced to turn the corner, and ran against her, somewhat roughly.

“Hallo! is that you?” he demanded, in tones that told too clearly where he had been spending the night.

“Yes, Ned, it’s me. I was just thinking about going home.”

“Home, indeed—’stime to b’goin’ home. Where’v you bin? The babby ’ll ’v bin squallin’ pretty stiff by this time.”

“No fear of baby now,” returned the wife almost defiantly; “it’s gone.”

“Gone!” almost shouted the husband. “You haven’t murdered it, have you?”

“No, but I’ve put it in safe keeping, where you can’t get at it, and, now I know that, I don’t care what you do to me.”

“Ha! we’ll see about that. Come along.”

He seized the woman by the arm and hurried her towards their dwelling.

It was little better than a cellar, the door being reached by a descent of five or six much-worn steps. To the surprise of the couple the door, which was usually shut at that hour, stood partly open, and a bright light shone within.

“Wastin’ coal and candle,” growled the man with an angry oath, as he approached.

“Hetty didn’t use to be so extravagant,” remarked the woman, in some surprise.

As she spoke the door was flung wide open, and an overgrown but very handsome girl peered out.

“Oh! father, I thought it was your voice,” she said. “Mother, is that you? Come in, quick. Here’s Bobby brought home in a cab with a broken leg.”

On hearing this the man’s voice softened, and, entering the room, he went up to a heap of straw in one corner whereon our little friend Bobby Frog—the street-Arab—lay.

“Hallo! Bobby, wot’s wrong with ’ee? You ain’t used to come to grief,” said the father, laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and giving him a rough shake.

Things oftentimes “are not what they seem.” The shake was the man’s mode of expressing sympathy, for he was fond of his son, regarding him, with some reason, as a most hopeful pupil in the ways of wickedness.

“It’s o’ no use, father,” said the boy, drawing his breath quickly and knitting his brows, “you can’t stir me up with a long pole now. I’m past that.”

“What! have ’ee bin runned over?”

“No—on’y run down, or knocked down.”

“Who did it? On’y give me his name an’ address, an’ as sure as my name’s Ned I’ll—”

He finished the sentence with a sufficiently expressive scowl and clenching of a huge fist, which had many a time done great execution in the prize ring.

“It wasn’t a he, father, it was a she.”

“Well, no matter, if I on’y had my fingers on her windpipe I’d squeeze it summat.”

“If you did I’d bang your nose! She didn’t go for to do it a-purpose, you old grampus,” retorted Bobby, intending the remark to be taken as a gentle yet affectionate reproof. “A doctor’s bin an’ set my leg,” continued the boy, “an’ made it as stiff as a poker wi’ what ’e calls splints. He says I won’t be able to go about for ever so many weeks.”

“An’ who’s to feed you, I wonder, doorin’ them weeks? An’ who sent for the doctor? Was it him as supplied the fire an’ candle to-night?”

“No, father, it was me,” answered Hetty, who was engaged in stirring something in a small saucepan, the loose handle of which was attached to its battered body by only one rivet; the other rivet had given way on an occasion when Ned Frog sent it flying through the doorway after his retreating wife. “You see I was paid my wages to-night, so I could afford it, as well as to buy some coal and a candle, for the doctor said Bobby must be kept warm.”

“Afford it!” exclaimed Ned, in rising wrath, “how can ’ee say you can afford it w’en I ’aven’t had enough grog to half screw me, an’ not a brown left. Did the doctor ask a fee?”

“No, father, I offered him one, but he wouldn’t take it.”

“Ah—very good on ’im! I wonder them fellows has the cheek to ask fees for on’y givin’ advice. W’y, I’d give advice myself all day long at a penny an hour, an’ think myself well off too if I got that—better off than them as got the advice anyhow. What are you sittin’ starin’ at an’ sulkin’ there for?”

This last remark was addressed gruffly to Mrs Frog, who, during the previous conversation, had seated herself on a low three-legged stool, and, clasping her hands over her knees, gazed at the dirty blank walls in blanker despair.

The poor woman realised the situation better than her drunken husband did. As a bird-fancier he contributed little, almost nothing, to the general fund on which this family subsisted. He was a huge, powerful fellow, and had various methods of obtaining money—some obvious and others mysterious—but nearly all his earnings went to the gin-palace, for Ned was a man of might, and could stand an enormous quantity of drink. Hetty, who worked, perhaps we should say slaved, for a firm which paid her one shilling a week, could not manage to find food for them all. Mrs Frog herself with her infant to care for, had found it hard work at any time to earn a few pence, and now Bobby’s active little limbs were reduced to inaction, converting him into a consumer instead of a producer. In short, the glaring fact that the family expenses would be increased while the family income was diminished, stared Mrs Frog as blankly in the face as she stared at the dirty blank wall.

And her case was worse, even, than people in better circumstances might imagine, for the family lived so literally from hand to mouth that there was no time even to think when a difficulty arose or disaster befell. They rented their room from a man who styled it a furnished apartment, in virtue of a rickety table, a broken chair, a worn-out sheet or two, a dilapidated counterpane, four ragged blankets, and the infirm saucepan before mentioned, besides a few articles of cracked or broken crockery. For this accommodation the landlord charged ninepence per day, which sum had to be paid every night before the family was allowed to retire to rest! In the event of failure to pay they would have been turned out into the street at once, and the door padlocked. Thus the necessity for a constant, though small, supply of cash became urgent, and the consequent instability of “home” very depressing.

To preserve his goods from the pawnbroker, and prevent a moonlight flitting, this landlord had printed on his sheets the words “stolen from —” and on the blankets and counterpane were stamped the words “stop thief!”

Mrs Frog made no reply to her husband’s gruff question, which induced the man to seize an empty bottle, as being the best way of rousing her attention.

“Come, you let mother alone, dad,” suggested Bobby, “she ain’t a-aggrawatin’ of you just now.”

“Why, mother,” exclaimed Hetty, who was so busy with Bobby’s supper, and, withal, so accustomed to the woman’s looks of hopeless misery that she had failed to observe anything unusual until her attention was thus called to her, “what ever have you done with the baby?”

“Ah—you may well ask that,” growled Ned.

Even the boy seemed to forget his pain for a moment as he now observed, anxiously, that his mother had not the usual bundle on her breast.

“The baby’s gone!” she said, bitterly, still keeping her eyes on the blank wall.

“Gone!—how?—lost? killed? speak, mother,” burst from Hetty and the boy.

“No, only gone to where it will be better cared for than here.”

“Come, explain, old woman,” said Ned, again laying his hand on the bottle.

As Hetty went and took her hand gently, Mrs Frog condescended to explain, but absolutely refused to tell to whose care the baby had been consigned.

“Well—it ain’t a bad riddance, after all,” said the man, as he rose, and, staggering into a corner where another bundle of straw was spread on the floor, flung himself down. Appropriately drawing two of the “stop thief” blankets over him, he went to sleep.

Then Mrs Frog, feeling comparatively sure of quiet for the remainder of the night, drew her stool close to the side of her son, and held such intercourse with him as she seldom had the chance of holding while Bobby was in a state of full health and bodily vigour. Hetty, meanwhile, ministered to them both, for she was one of those dusty diamonds of what may be styled the East-end diggings of London—not so rare, perhaps, as many people may suppose—whose lustre is dimmed and intrinsic value somewhat concealed by the neglect and the moral as well as physical filth by which they are surrounded.

“Of course you’ve paid the ninepence, Hetty?”

“Yes, mother.”

“You might ’ave guessed that,” said Bobby, “for, if she ’adn’t we shouldn’t ’ave bin here.”

“That and the firing and candle, with what the doctor ordered, has used up all I had earned, even though I did some extra work and was paid for it,” said Hetty with a sigh. “But I don’t grudge it, Bobby—I’m only sorry because there’s nothing more coming to me till next week.”

“Meanwhile there is nothing for this week,” said Mrs Frog with a return of the despair, as she looked at her prostrate son, “for all I can manage to earn will barely make up the rent—if it does even that—and father, you know, drinks nearly all he makes. God help us!”

“God will help us,” said Hetty, sitting down on the floor and gently stroking the back of her mother’s hand, “for He sent the trouble, and will hear us when we cry to Him.”

“Pray to Him, then, Hetty, for it’s no use askin’ me to join you. I can’t pray. An’ don’t let your father hear, else he’ll be wild.”

The poor girl bent her head on her knees as she sat, and prayed silently. Her mother and brother, neither of whom had any faith in prayer, remained silent, while her father, breathing stertorously in the corner, slept the sleep of the drunkard.

Chapter Four.

Samuel Twitter astonishes Mrs Twitter and her Friends.

In a former chapter we described, to some extent, the person and belongings of a very poor man with five thousand a year. Let us now make the acquaintance of a very rich one with an income of five hundred.

He has already introduced himself to the reader under the name of Samuel Twitter.

On the night of which we write Mrs Twitter happened to have a “few friends” to tea. And let no one suppose that Mrs Twitter’s few friends were to be put off with afternoon tea—that miserable invention of modern times—nor with a sham meal of sweet warm water and thin bread and butter. By no means. We have said that Samuel Twitter was rich, and Mrs Twitter, conscious of her husband’s riches, as well as grateful for them, went in for the substantial and luxurious to an amazing extent.

Unlimited pork sausages and inexhaustible buttered toast, balanced with muffins or crumpets, was her idea of “tea.” The liquid was a secondary point—in one sense—but it was always strong. It was the only strong liquid in fact allowed in the house, for Mr Twitter, Mrs Twitter, and all the little Twitters were members of the Blue Ribbon Army; more or less enthusiastic according to their light and capacity.

The young Twitters descended in a graduated scale from Sammy, the eldest, (about sixteen), down through Molly, and Willie, and Fred, and Lucy, to Alice the so-called “baby”—though she was at that time a remarkably robust baby of four years.

Mrs Twitter’s few friends were aware of her tendencies, and appreciated her hospitality, insomuch that the “few” bade fair to develop by degrees into many.

Well, Mrs Twitter had her few friends to tea, and conviviality was at its height. The subject of conversation was poverty. Mrs Loper, a weak-minded but amiable lady, asserted that a large family with 500 pounds a year was a poor family. Mrs Loper did not know that Mrs Twitter’s income was five hundred, but she suspected it. Mrs Twitter herself carefully avoided giving the slightest hint on the subject.

“Of course,” continued Mrs Loper, “I don’t mean to say that people with five hundred are very poor, you know; indeed it all depends on the family. With six children like you, now, to feed and clothe and educate, and with everything so dear as it is now, I should say that five hundred was poverty.”

“Well, I don’t quite agree with you, Mrs Loper, on that point. To my mind it does not so much depend on the family, as on the notions, and the capacity to manage, in the head of the family. I remember one family just now, whose head was cut off suddenly, I may say in the prime of life. A hundred and fifty a year or thereabouts was the income the widow had to count on, and she was left with five little ones to rear. She trained them well, gave them good educations, made most of their garments with her own hands when they were little, and sent one of her boys to college, yet was noted for the amount of time she spent in visiting the poor, the sick, and the afflicted, for whom she had always a little to spare out of her limited income. Now, if wealth is to be measured by results, I think we may say that that poor lady was rich. She was deeply mourned by a large circle of poor people when she was taken home to the better land. Her small means, having been judiciously invested by a brother, increased a little towards the close of life, but she never was what the world esteems rich.”

Mrs Twitter looked at a very tall man with a dark unhandsome countenance, as if to invite his opinion.

“I quite agree with you,” he said, helping himself to a crumpet, “there are some people with small incomes who seem to be always in funds, just as there are other people with large incomes who are always hard-up. The former are really rich, the latter really poor.”

Having delivered himself of these sentiments somewhat sententiously, Mr Crackaby,—that was his name,—proceeded to consume the crumpet.

There was a general tendency on the part of the other guests to agree with their hostess, but one black sheep in the flock objected. He quite agreed, of course, with the general principle that liberality with small means was beautiful to behold as well as desirable to possess—the liberality, not the small means—and that, on the other hand, riches with a narrow niggardly spirit was abominable, but then—and the black sheep came, usually, to the strongest part of his argument when he said “but then”—it was an uncommonly difficult thing, when everything was up to famine prices, and gold was depreciated in value owing to the gold-fields, and silver was nowhere, and coppers were changed into bronze,—exceedingly difficult to practise liberality and at the same time to make the two ends meet.

As no one clearly saw the exact bearing of the black sheep’s argument, they all replied with that half idiotic simper with which Ignorance seeks to conceal herself, and which Politeness substitutes for the more emphatic “pooh,” or the inelegant “bosh.” Then, applying themselves with renewed zest to the muffins, they put about ship, nautically speaking, and went off on a new tack.

“Mr Twitter is rather late to-night, I think?” said Mr Crackaby, consulting his watch, which was antique and turnipy in character.

“He is, indeed,” replied the hostess, “business must have detained him, for he is the very soul of punctuality. That is one of his many good qualities, and it is such a comfort, for I can always depend on him to the minute,—breakfast, dinner, tea; he never keeps us waiting, as too many men do, except, of course, when he is unavoidably detained by business.”

“Ah, yes, business has much to answer for,” remarked Mrs Loper, in a tone which suggested that she held business to be an incorrigibly bad fellow; “whatever mischief happens with one’s husband it’s sure to be business that did it.”

“Pardon me, madam,” objected the black sheep, whose name, by the way, was Stickler, “business does bring about much of the disaster that often appertains to wedded life, but mischief is sometimes done by other means, such, for instance, as accidents, robberies, murders—”

“Oh! Mr Stickler,” suddenly interrupted a stout, smiling lady, named Larrabel, who usually did the audience part of Mrs Twitter’s little tea parties, “how can you suggest such ideas, especially when Mr Twitter is unusually late?”

Mr Stickler protested that he had no intention of alarming the company by disagreeable suggestions, that he had spoken of accident, robbery, and murder in the abstract.

“There, you’ve said it all over again,” interrupted Mrs Larrabel, with an unwonted frown.

“But then,” continued Stickler, regardless of the interruption, “a broken leg, or a rifled pocket and stunned person, or a cut windpipe, may be applicable to the argument in hand without being applied to Mr Twitter.”

“Surely,” said Mrs Loper, who deemed the reply unanswerable.

In this edifying strain the conversation flowed on until the evening grew late and the party began to grow alarmed.

“I do hope nothing has happened to him,” said Mrs Loper, with a solemnised face.

“I think not. I have seen him come home much later than this—though not often,” said the hostess, the only one of the party who seemed quite at ease, and who led the conversation back again into shallower channels.

As the night advanced, however, the alarm became deeper, and it was even suggested by Mrs Loper that Crackaby should proceed to Twitter’s office—a distance of three miles—to inquire whether and when he had left; while the smiling Mrs Larrabel proposed to send information to the headquarters of the police in Scotland Yard, because the police knew everything, and could find out anything.

“You have no idea, my dear,” she said, “how clever they are at Scotland Yard. Would you believe it, I left my umbrellar the other day in a cab, and I didn’t know the number of the cab, for numbers won’t remain in my head, nor the look of the cabman, for I never look at cabmen, they are so rude sometimes. I didn’t even remember the place where I got into the cab, for I can’t remember places when I’ve to go to so many, so I gave up my umbrellar for lost and was going away, when a policeman stepped up to me and asked in a very civil tone if I had lost anything. He was so polite and pleasant that I told him of my loss, though I knew it would do me no good, as he had not seen the cab or the cabman.

“‘I think, madam,’ he said, ‘that if you go down to Scotland Yard to-morrow morning, you may probably find it there.’

“‘Young man,’ said I, ‘do you take me for a fool!’

“‘No, madam, I don’t,’ he replied.

“‘Or do you take my umbrellar for a fool,’ said I, ‘that it should walk down to Scotland Yard of its own accord and wait there till I called for it?’

“‘Certainly not, madam,’ he answered with such a pleasant smile that I half forgave him.

“‘Nevertheless if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Scotland Yard to-morrow,’ he added, ‘it might be as well to call in and inquire.’

“‘Thank you,’ said I, with a stiff bow as I left him. On the way home, however, I thought there might be something in it, so I did go down to Scotland Yard next day, where I was received with as much civility as if I had been a lady of quality, and was taken to a room as full of umbrellas as an egg’s full of meat—almost.

“‘You’d know the umbrellar if you saw it, madam,’ said the polite constable who escorted me.

“‘Know it, sir!’ said I, ‘yes, I should think I would. Seven and sixpence it cost me—new, and I’ve only had it a week—brown silk with a plain handle—why, there it is!’ And there it was sure enough, and he gave it to me at once, only requiring me to write my name in a book, which I did with great difficulty because of my gloves, and being so nervous. Now, how did the young policeman that spoke to me the day before know that my umbrellar would go there, and how did it get there? They say the days of miracles are over, but I don’t think so, for that was a miracle if ever there was one.”

“The days of miracles are indeed over, ma’am,” said the black sheep, “but then that is no reason why things which are in themselves commonplace should not appear miraculous to the uninstructed mind. When I inform you that our laws compel cabmen under heavy penalties to convey left umbrellas and parcels to the police-office, the miracle may not seem quite so surprising.”

Most people dislike to have their miracles unmasked. Mrs Larrabel turned from the black sheep to her hostess without replying, and repeated her suggestion about making inquiries at Scotland Yard—thus delicately showing that although, possibly, convinced, she was by no means converted.

They were interrupted at this point by a hurried knock at the street door.

“There he is at last,” exclaimed every one.

“It is his knock, certainly,” said Mrs Twitter, with a perplexed look, “but rather peculiar—not so firm as usual—there it is again! Impatient! I never knew my Sam impatient before in all our wedded life. You’d better open the door, dear,” she said, turning to the eldest Twitter, he being the only one of the six who was privileged to sit up late, “Mary seems to have fallen asleep.”

Before the eldest Twitter could obey, the maligned Mary was heard to open the door and utter an exclamation of surprise, and her master’s step was heard to ascend the stair rather unsteadily.

The guests looked at each other anxiously. It might be that to some minds—certainly to that of the black sheep—visions of violated blue-ribbonism occurred. As certainly these visions did not occur to Mrs Twitter. She would sooner have doubted her clergyman than her husband. Trustfulness formed a prominent part of her character, and her confidence in her Sam was unbounded.

Even when her husband came against the drawing-room door with an awkward bang—the passage being dark—opened it with a fling, and stood before the guests with a flushed countenance, blazing eyes, a peculiar deprecatory smile, and a dirty ragged bundle in his arms, she did not doubt him.

“Forgive me, my dear,” he said, gazing at his wife in a manner that might well have justified the black sheep’s thought, “screwed,” “I—I—business kept me in the office very late, and then—” He cast an imbecile glance at the bundle.

“What ever have you got there, Sam?” asked his wondering wife.

“Goodness me! it moves!” exclaimed Mrs Loper.

“Live poultry!” thought the black sheep, and visions of police cells and penal servitude floated before his depraved mental vision.

“Yes, Mrs Loper, it moves. It is alive—though not very much alive, I fear. My dear, I’ve found—found a baby—picked it up in the street. Not a soul there but me. Would have perished or been trodden on if I had not taken it up. See here!”

He untied the dirty bundle as he spoke, and uncovered the round little pinched face with the great solemn eyes, which gazed, still wonderingly, at the assembled company.

It is due to the assembled company to add that it returned the gaze with compound interest.

Chapter Five.

Treats still further of Riches, Poverty, Babies, and Police.

When Mr and Mrs Twitter had dismissed the few friends that night, they sat down at their own fireside, with no one near them but the little foundling, which lay in the youngest Twitter’s disused cradle, gazing at them with its usual solemnity, for it did not seem to require sleep. They opened up their minds to each other thus:—

“Now, Samuel,” said Mrs Twitter, “the question is, what are you going to do with it?”

“Well, Mariar,” returned her spouse, with an assumption of profound gravity, “I suppose we must send it to the workhouse.”

“You know quite well, Sam, that you don’t mean that,” said Mrs Twitter, “the dear little forsaken mite! Just look at its solemn eyes. It has been clearly cast upon us, Sam, and it seems to me that we are bound to look after it.”

“What! with six of our own, Mariar?”

“Yes, Sam. Isn’t there a song which says something about luck in odd numbers?”

“And with only 500 pounds a year?” objected Mr Twitter.

“Only five hundred. How can you speak so? We are rich with five hundred. Can we not educate our little ones?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“And entertain our friends?”

“Yes, my love,—with crumpets and tea.”

“Don’t forget muffins and bloater paste, and German sausage and occasional legs of mutton, you ungrateful man!”

“I don’t forget ’em, Mariar. My recollection of ’em is powerful; I may even say vivid.”

“Well,” continued the lady, “haven’t you been able to lend small sums on several occasions to friends—”

“Yes, my dear,—and they are still loans,” murmured the husband.

“And don’t we give a little—I sometimes think too little—regularly to the poor, and to the church, and haven’t we got a nest-egg laid by in the Post-office savings-bank?”

“All true, Mariar, and all your doing. But for your thrifty ways, and economical tendencies, and rare financial abilities, I should have been bankrupt long ere now.”

Mr Twitter was nothing more than just in this statement of his wife’s character. She was one of those happily constituted women who make the best and the most of everything, and who, while by no means turning her eyes away from the dark sides of things, nevertheless gave people the impression that she saw only their bright sides. Her economy would have degenerated into nearness if it had not been commensurate with her liberality, for while, on the one hand, she was ever anxious, almost eager, to give to the needy and suffering every penny that she could spare, she was, on the other hand, strictly economical in trifles. Indeed Mrs Twitter’s vocabulary did not contain the word trifle. One of her favourite texts of Scripture, which was always in her mind, and which she had illuminated in gold and hung on her bedroom walls with many other words of God, was, “Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost.” Acting on this principle with all her heart, she gathered up the fragments of time, so that she had always a good deal of that commodity to spare, and was never in a hurry. She gathered up bits of twine and made neat little rings of them, which she deposited in a basket—a pretty large basket—which in time became such a repository of wealth in that respect that the six Twitters never failed to find the exact size and quality of cordage wanted by them—and, indeed, even after the eldest, Sammy, came to the years of discretion, if he had suddenly required a cable suited to restrain a first-rate iron-clad, his mind would, in the first blush of the thing, have reverted to mother’s basket! If friends wrote short notes to Mrs Twitter—which they often did, for the sympathetic find plenty of correspondents—the blank leaves were always torn off and consigned to a scrap-paper box, and the pile grew big enough at last to have set up a small stationer in business. And so with everything that came under her influence at home or abroad. She emphatically did what she could to prevent waste, and became a living fulfilment of the well-known proverb, for as she wasted not she wanted not.

But to return from this digression—

“Well, then,” said Mrs Twitter, “don’t go and find fault, Samuel,” (she used the name in full when anxious to be impressive), “with what Providence has given us, by putting the word ‘only’ to it, for we are rich with five hundred a year.”

Mr Twitter freely admitted that he was wrong, and said he would be more careful in future of the use to which he put the word “only.”

“But,” said he, “we haven’t a hole or corner in the house to put the poor thing in. To be sure, there’s the coal-cellar and the scuttle might be rigged up as a cradle, but—”

He paused, and looked at his wife. The deceiver did not mean all this to be taken as a real objection. He was himself anxious to retain the infant, and only made this show of opposition to enlist Maria more certainly on his side.

“Not a corner!” she exclaimed, “why, is there not the whole parlour? Do you suppose that a baby requires a four-post bed, and a wash-hand-stand, and a five-foot mirror? Couldn’t we lift the poor darling in and out in half a minute? Besides, there is our own room. I feel as if there was an uncomfortable want of some sort ever since our baby was transplanted to the nursery. So we will establish the old bassinet and put the mite there.”

“And what shall we call it, Maria?”

“Call it—why, call it—call it—Mite—no name could be more appropriate.”

“But, my love, Mite, if a name at all, is a man’s—that is, it sounds like a masculine name.”

“Call it Mita, then.”

And so it was named, and thus that poor little waif came to be adopted by that “rich” family.

It seems to be our mission, at this time, to introduce our readers to various homes—the homes of England, so to speak! But let not our readers become impatient, while we lead the way to one more home, and open the door with our secret latch-key.

This home is in some respects peculiar. It is not a poor one, for it is comfortable and clean. Neither is it a rich one, for there are few ornaments, and no luxuries about it. Over the fire stoops a comely young woman, as well as one can judge, at least, from the rather faint light that enters through a small window facing a brick wall. The wall is only five feet from the window, and some previous occupant of the rooms had painted on it a rough landscape, with three very green trees and a very blue lake, and a swan in the middle thereof, sitting on an inverted swan which was meant to be his reflection, but somehow seemed rather more real than himself. The picture is better, perhaps, than the bricks were, yet it is not enlivening. The only other objects in the room worth mentioning are, a particularly small book-shelf in a corner; a cuckoo-clock on the mantel-shelf, an engraved portrait of Queen Victoria on the wall opposite in a gilt frame, and a portrait of Sir Robert Peel in a frame of rosewood beside it.

On a little table in the centre of the room are the remains of a repast. Under the table is a very small child, probably four years of age. Near the window is another small, but older child—a boy of about six or seven. He is engaged in fitting on his little head a great black cloth helmet with a bronze badge, and a peak behind as well as before.

Having nearly extinguished himself with the helmet, the small boy seizes a very large truncheon, and makes a desperate effort to flourish it.

Close to the comely woman stands a very tall, very handsome, and very powerful man, who is putting in the uppermost buttons of a police-constable’s uniform.

Behold, reader, the tableau vivant to which we would call your attention!

“Where d’you go on duty to-day, Giles,” asked the comely young woman, raising her face to that of her husband.

“Oxford Circus,” replied the policeman. “It is the first time I’ve been put on fixed-point duty. That’s the reason I’m able to breakfast with you and the children, Molly, instead of being off at half-past five in the morning as usual. I shall be on for a month.”

“I’m glad of it, Giles, for it gives the children a chance of seeing something of you. I wish you’d let me look at that cut on your shoulder. Do!”

“No, no, Molly,” returned the man, as he pushed his wife playfully away from him. “Hands off! You know the punishment for assaulting the police is heavy! Now then, Monty,” (to the boy), “give up my helmet and truncheon. I must be off.”

“Not yet, daddy,” cried Monty, “I’s a pleeceman of the A Division, Number 2, ’ats me, an’ I’m goin’ to catch a t’ief. I ’mell ’im.”

“You smell him, do you? Where is he, d’you think?”

“Oh! I know,” replied the small policeman—here he came close up to his father, and, getting on tiptoe, said in a very audible whisper, “he’s under de table, but don’ tell ’im I know. His name’s Joe!”

“All right, I’ll keep quiet, Monty, but look alive and nab him quick, for I must be off.”

Thus urged the small policeman went on tiptoe to the table, made a sudden dive under it, and collared his little brother.

The arrest, however, being far more prompt than had been expected, the “t’ief” refused to be captured. A struggle ensued, in the course of which the helmet rolled off, a corner of the tablecloth was pulled down, and the earthenware teapot fell with a crash to the floor.

“It’s my duty, I fear,” said Giles, “to take you both into custody and lock you up in a cell for breaking the teapot as well as the peace, but I’ll be merciful and let you off this time, Monty, if you lend your mother a hand to pick up the pieces.”

Monty agreed to accept this compromise. The helmet and truncheon were put to their proper uses, and the merciful police-constable went out “on duty.”

Chapter Six.

Wealth pays a Visit to Poverty.

It was an interesting sight to watch police-constable Number 666 as he went through the performance of his arduous duties that day at the Regent Circus in Oxford Street.

To those who are unacquainted with London, it may be necessary to remark that this circus is one of those great centres of traffic where two main arteries cross and tend to cause so much obstruction, that complete stoppages would become frequent were it not for the admirable management of the several members of the police force who are stationed there to keep order. The “Oxford Circus,” as it is sometimes called, is by no means the largest or most crowded of such crossings, nevertheless the tide of traffic is sufficiently strong and continuous there to require several police-constables on constant duty. When men are detailed for such “Fixed-Point” duty they go on it for a month at a time, and have different hours from the other men, namely, from nine in the morning till five in the afternoon.

We have said it was interesting to watch our big hero, Number 666, in the performance of his arduous duties. He occupied the crossing on the city side of the circus.

It was a magnificent afternoon, and all the metropolitan butterflies were out. Busses flowed on in a continuous stream, looking like big bullies who incline to use their weight and strength to crush through all obstruction. The drivers of these were for the most part wise men, and restrained themselves and their steeds. In one or two instances, where the drivers were unwise, a glance from the bright eye of Giles Scott was quite sufficient to keep all right.

And Giles could only afford to bestow a fragmentary glance at any time on the refractory, for, almost at one and the same moment he had to check the impetuous, hold up a warning hand to the unruly, rescue a runaway child from innumerable horse-legs, pilot a stout but timid lady from what we may call refuge-island, in the middle of the roadway, to the pavement, answer an imbecile’s question as to the whereabouts of the Tower or Saint Paul’s, order a loitering cabby to move on, and look out for his own toes, as well as give moderate attention to the carriage-poles which perpetually threatened the small of his own back.

We should imagine that the premium of insurance on the life of Number 666 was fabulous in amount, but cannot tell.

Besides his great height, Giles possessed a drooping moustache, which added much to his dignified appearance. He was also imperturbably grave, except when offering aid to a lady or a little child, on which occasions the faintest symptoms of a smile floated for a moment on his visage like an April sunbeam. At all other times his expression was that of incorruptible justice and awful immobility. No amount of chaff, no quantity of abuse, no kind of flattery, no sort of threat could move him any more than the seething billows of the Mediterranean can move Gibraltar. Costermongers growled at him hopelessly. Irate cabmen saw that their wisdom lay in submission. Criminals felt that once in his grasp their case was hopeless, just as, conversely, old ladies felt that once under his protection they were in absolute security. Even street-boys felt that references to “bobbies,” “coppers,” and “slops;” questions as to how ’is ’ead felt up there; who rolled ’im hout so long; whether his mother knew ’e was hout; whether ’e’d sell ’em a bit of ’is legs; with advice to come down off the ladder, or to go ’ome to bed—that all these were utterly thrown away and lost upon Giles Scott.

The garb of the London policeman is not, as every one knows, founded on the principles of aesthetics. Neither has it been devised on utilitarian principles. Indeed we doubt whether the originator of it, (and we are happy to profess ignorance of his name), proceeded on any principle whatever, except the gratification of a wild and degraded fancy. The colour, of course, is not objectionable, and the helmet might be worse, but the tunic is such that the idea of grace or elegance may not consist with it.

We mention these facts because Giles Scott was so well-made that he forced his tunic to look well, and thus added one more to the already numerous “exceptions” which are said to “prove the rule.”

“Allow me, madam,” said Giles, offering his right-hand to an elderly female, who, having screwed up her courage to make a rush, got into sudden danger and became mentally hysterical in the midst of a conglomerate of hoofs, poles, horse-heads, and wheels.

The female allowed him, and the result was sudden safety, a gasp of relief, and departure of hysteria.

“Not yet, please,” said Giles, holding up a warning right-hand to the crowd on refuge-island, while with his left waving gently to and fro he gave permission to the mighty stream to flow. “Now,” he added, holding up the left-hand suddenly. The stream was stopped as abruptly as were the waters of Jordan in days of old, and the storm-staid crew on refuge-island made a rush for the mainland. It was a trifling matter to most of them that rush, but of serious moment to the few whose limbs had lost their elasticity, or whose minds could not shake off the memory of the fact that between 200 and 300 lives are lost in London streets by accidents every year, and that between 3000 and 4000 are more or less severely injured annually.

Before the human stream had got quite across, an impatient hansom made a push. The eagle eye of Number 666 had observed the intention, and in a moment his gigantic figure stood calmly in front of the horse, whose head was raised high above his helmet as the driver tightened the reins violently.

Just then a small slipshod girl made an anxious dash from refuge-island, lost courage, and turned to run back, changed her mind, got bewildered, stopped suddenly and yelled.

Giles caught her by the arm, bore her to the pavement, and turned, just in time to see the hansom dash on in the hope of being overlooked. Vain hope! Number 666 saw the number of the hansom, booked it in his memory while he assisted in raising up an old gentleman who had been overturned, though not injured, in endeavouring to avoid it.

During the lull—for there are lulls in the rush of London traffic, as in the storms of nature,—Giles transferred the number of that hansom to his note-book, thereby laying up a little treat for its driver in the shape of a little trial the next day terminating, probably, with a fine.

Towards five in the afternoon the strain of all this began to tell even on the powerful frame of Giles Scott, but no symptom did he show of fatigue, and so much reserve force did he possess that it is probable he would have exhibited as calm and unwearied a front if he had remained on duty for eighteen hours instead of eight.

About that hour, also, there came an unusual glut to the traffic, in the form of a troop of the horse-guards. These magnificent creatures, resplendent in glittering steel, white plumes, and black boots, were passing westward. Giles stood in front of the arrested stream. A number of people stood, as it were, under his shadow. Refuge-island was overflowing. Comments, chiefly eulogistic, were being freely made and some impatience was being manifested by drivers, when a little shriek was heard, and a child’s voice exclaimed:—

“Oh! papa, papa—there’s my policeman—the one I so nearly killed. He’s not dead after all!”

Giles forgot his dignity for one moment, and, looking round, met the eager gaze of little Di Brandon.

Another moment and duty required his undivided attention, so that he lost sight of her, but Di took good care not to lose sight of him.

“We will wait here, darling,” said her father, referring to refuge-island on which he stood, “and when he is disengaged we can speak to him.”

“Oh! I’m so glad he’s not dead,” said little Di, “and p’raps he’ll be able to show us the way to my boy’s home.”

Di had a method of adopting, in a motherly way, all who, in the remotest manner, came into her life. Thus she not only spoke of our butcher and our baker, which was natural, but referred to “my policeman” and “my boy” ever since the day of the accident.

When Giles had set his portion of the traffic in harmonious motion he returned to his island, and was not sorry to receive the dignified greeting of Sir Richard Brandon, while he was delighted as well as amused by the enthusiastic grasp with which Di seized his huge hand in both of her little ones, and the earnest manner in which she inquired after his health, and if she had hurt him much.

“Did they put you to bed and give you hot gruel?” she asked, with touching pathos.

“No, miss, they didn’t think I was hurt quite enough to require it,” answered Giles, his drooping moustache curling slightly as he spoke.

“I had hoped to see you at my house,” said Sir Richard, “you did not call.”

“Thank you, sir, I did not think the little service I rendered your daughter worth making so much of. I called, however, the same evening, to inquire for her, but did not wish to intrude on you.”

“It would have been no intrusion, friend,” returned Sir Richard, with grand condescension. “One who has saved my child’s life has a claim upon my consideration.”

“A dook ’e must be,” said a small street boy in a loud stage whisper to a dray-man—for small street-boys are sown broadcast in London, and turn up at all places on every occasion, “or p’raps,” he added on reflection, “’e’s on’y a markiss.”

“Now then,” said Giles to the dray-man with a motion of the hand that caused him to move on, while he cast a look on the boy which induced him to move off.

“By the way, constable,” said Sir Richard, “I am on my way to visit a poor boy whose leg was broken on the day my pony ran away. He was holding the pony at the time. He lives in Whitechapel somewhere. I have the address here in my note-book.”

“Excuse me, sir, one moment,” said Number 666, going towards a crowd which had gathered round a fallen horse. “I happen to be going to that district myself,” he continued on returning, “what is the boy’s name?”

“Robert—perhaps I should rather say Bobby Frog,” answered Sir Richard.

“The name is familiar,” returned the policeman, “but in London there are so many—what’s his address, sir,—Roy’s Court, near Commercial Street? Oh! I know it well—one of the worst parts of London. I know the boy too. He is somewhat noted in that neighbourhood for giving the police trouble. Not a bad-hearted fellow, I believe, but full of mischief, and has been brought up among thieves from his birth. His father is, or was, a bird-fancier and seller of penny articles on the streets, besides being a professional pugilist. You will be the better for protection there, sir. I would advise you not to go alone. If you can wait for five or ten minutes,” added Giles, “I shall be off duty and will be happy to accompany you.”

Sir Richard agreed to wait. Within the time mentioned Giles was relieved, and, entering a cab with his friends, drove towards Whitechapel. They had to pass near our policeman’s lodgings on the way.

“Would you object, sir, stopping at my house for five minutes?” he asked.

“Certainly not,” returned the knight, “I am in no hurry.”

Number 666 stopped the cab, leaped out and disappeared through a narrow passage. In less than five minutes a very tall gentlemanly man issued from the same passage and approached them. Little Di opened her blue eyes to their very uttermost. It was her policeman in plain clothes!

She did not like the change at all at first, but before the end of the drive got used to him in his new aspect—all the more readily that he seemed to have cast off much of his stiffness and reserve with his blue skin.

Near the metropolitan railway station in Whitechapel the cab was dismissed, and Giles led the father and child along the crowded thoroughfare until they reached Commercial Street, along which they proceeded a short distance.

“We are now near some of the worst parts of London, sir,” said Giles, “where great numbers of the criminal and most abandoned characters dwell.”

“Indeed,” said Sir Richard, who did not seem to be much gratified by the information.

As for Di, she was nearly crying. The news that her boy was a thief and was born in the midst of such naughty people had fallen with chilling influence on her heart, for she had never thought of anything but the story-book “poor but honest parents!”

“What large building is that?” inquired the knight, who began to wish that he had not given way to his daughter’s importunities, “the one opposite, I mean, with placards under the windows.”

“That is the well-known Home of Industry, instituted and managed by Miss Macpherson and a staff of volunteer workers. They do a deal of good, sir, in this neighbourhood.”

“Ah! indeed,” said Sir Richard, who had never before heard of the Home of Industry. “And, pray, what particular industry does this Miss Mac— what did you call her?”

“Macpherson. The lady, you know, who sends out so many rescued waifs and strays to Canada, and spends all her time in caring for the poorest of the poor in the East-End and in preaching the gospel to them. You’ve often seen accounts of her work, no doubt, in the Christian?”

“Well—n–no. I read the Times, but, now you mention it, I have some faint remembrance of seeing reference to such matters. Very self-denying, no doubt, and praiseworthy, though I must say that I doubt the use of preaching the gospel to such persons. From what I have seen of these lowest people I should think they were too deeply sunk in depravity to be capable of appreciating the lofty and sublime sentiments of Christianity.”

Number 666 felt a touch of surprise at these words, though he was too well-bred a policeman to express his feelings by word or look. In fact, although not pre-eminently noted for piety, he had been led by training, and afterwards by personal experience, to view this matter from a very different standpoint from that of Sir Richard. He made no reply, however, but, turning round the corner of the Home of Industry, entered a narrow street which bore palpable evidence of being the abode of deepest poverty. From the faces and garments of the inhabitants it was also evidently associated with the deepest depravity.

As little Di saw some of the residents sitting on their doorsteps with scratched faces, swelled lips and cheeks, and dishevelled hair, and beheld the children in half-naked condition rolling in the kennel and extremely filthy, she clung closer to her father’s side and began to suspect there were some phases of life she had never seen—had not even dreamt of!

What the knight’s thoughts were we cannot tell, for he said nothing, but disgust was more prominent than pity on his fine countenance. Those who sat on the doorsteps, or lolled with a dissipated air against the door-posts, seemed to appreciate him at his proper value, for they scowled at him as he passed. They recognised Number 666, however, (perhaps by his bearing), and gave him only a passing glance of indifference.

“You said it would be dangerous for me to come here by myself,” said Sir Richard, turning to Giles, as he entered another and even worse street. “Are they then so violent?”

“Many of them are among the worst criminals in London, sir. Here is the court of which you are in search: Roy’s Court.”

As he spoke, Ned Frog staggered out of his own doorway, clenched his fists, and looked with a vindictive scowl at the strangers. A second glance induced him to unclench his fists and reel round the corner on his way to a neighbouring grog-shop. Whatever other shops may decay in that region, the grog-shops, like noxious weeds, always flourish.

The court was apparently much deserted at that hour, for the men had not yet returned from their work—whatever that might be—and most of the women were within doors.

“This is the house,” continued Giles, descending the few steps, and tapping at the door; “I have been here before. They know me.”

The door was opened by Hetty, and for the first time since entering those regions of poverty and crime, little Di felt a slight rise in her spirits, for through Hetty’s face shone the bright spirit within; albeit the shining was through some dirt and dishevelment, good principle not being able altogether to overcome the depressing influences of extreme poverty and suffering.

“Is your mother at home, Hetty!”

“Oh! yes, sir. Mother, here’s Mr Scott. Come in, sir. We are so glad to see you, and—”

She stopped, and gazed inquiringly at the visitors who followed.

“I’ve brought some friends of Bobby to inquire for him. Sir Richard Brandon—Mrs Frog.”

Number 666 stood aside, and, with something like a smile on his face, ceremoniously presented Wealth to Poverty.

Wealth made a slightly confused bow to Poverty, and Poverty, looking askance at Wealth, dropt a mild courtesy.

“Vell now, I’m a Dutchman if it ain’t the hangel!” exclaimed a voice in the corner of the small room, before either Wealth or Poverty could utter a word.

“Oh! it’s my boy,” exclaimed Di with delight, forgetting or ignoring the poverty, dirt, and extremely bad air, as she ran forward and took hold of Bobby’s hand.

It was a pre-eminently dirty hand, and formed a remarkable contrast to the little hands that grasped it!

The small street boy was, for the first time in his life, bereft of speech! When that faculty returned, he remarked in language which was obscure to Di:—

“Vell, if this ain’t a go!”

“What is a go?” asked Di with innocent surprise. Instead of answering, Bobby Frog burst into a fit of laughter, but stopped rather suddenly with an expression of pain.

“Oh! ’old on! I say. This won’t do. Doctor ’e said I musn’t larf, ’cause it shakes the leg too much. But, you know, wot’s a cove to do ven a hangel comes to him and axes sitch rum questions?”

Again he laughed, and again stopped short in pain.

“I’m so sorry! Does it feel very painful? You can’t think how constantly I’ve been thinking of you since the accident; for it was all my fault. If I hadn’t jumped up in such a passion, the pony wouldn’t have run away, and you wouldn’t have been hurt. I’m so very, very sorry, and I got dear papa to bring me here to tell you so, and to see if we could do anything to make you well.”

Again Bobby was rendered speechless, but his mind was active.

“Wot! I ain’t dreamin’, am I? ’As a hangel really come to my bedside all the vay from the Vest-end, an’ brought ’er dear pa’—vich means the guv’nor, I fancy—all for to tell me—a kid whose life is spent in ‘movin’ on’—that she’s wery, wery, sorry I’ve got my leg broke, an’ that she’s bin an’ done it, an’ she would like to know if she can do hanythink as’ll make me vell! But it ain’t true. It’s a big lie! I’m dreamin’, that’s all. I’ve been took to hospital, an’ got d’lirious—that’s wot it is. I’ll try to sleep!”

With this end in view he shut his eyes, and remained quite still for a few seconds, and when Di looked at his pinched and pale face in this placid condition, the tears would overflow their natural boundary, and sobs would rise up in her pretty throat, but she choked them back for fear of disturbing her boy.

Presently the boy opened his eyes.

“Wot, are you there yet?” he asked.

“Oh yes. Did you think I was going away?” she replied, with a look of innocent surprise. “I won’t leave you now. I’ll stay here and nurse you, if papa will let me. I have slept once on a shake-down, when I was forced by a storm to stay all night at a juv’nile party. So if you’ve a corner here, it will do nicely—”

“My dear child,” interrupted her amazed father, “you are talking nonsense. And—do keep a little further from the bed. There may be—you know—infection—”

“Oh! you needn’t fear infection here, sir,” said Mrs Frog, somewhat sharply. “We are poor enough, God knows, though I have seen better times, but we keep ourselves pretty clean, though we can’t afford to spend much on soap when food is so dear, and money so scarce—so very scarce!”

“Forgive me, my good woman,” said Sir Richard, hastily, “I did not mean to offend, but circumstances would seem to favour the idea—of—of—”

And here Wealth—although a bank director and chairman of several boards, and capable of making a neat, if weakly, speech on economic laws and the currency when occasion required—was dumb before Poverty. Indeed, though he had often theorised about that stricken creature, he had never before fairly hunted her down, run her into her den, and fairly looked her in the face.

“The fact is, Mrs Frog,” said Giles Scott, coming to the rescue, “Sir Richard is anxious to know something about your affairs—your family, you know, and your means of—by the way, where is baby?” he said looking round the room.

“She’s gone lost,” said Mrs Frog.

“Lost?” repeated Giles, with a significant look.

“Ay, lost,” repeated Mrs Frog, with a look of equal significance.

“Bless me, how did you lose your child?” asked Sir Richard, in some surprise.

“Oh! sir, that often happens to us poor folk. We’re used to it,” said Mrs Frog, in a half bantering half bitter tone.

Sir Richard suddenly called to mind the fact—which had not before impressed him, though he had read and commented on it—that 11,835 children under ten years of age had been lost that year, (and it was no exceptional year, as police reports will show), in the streets of London, and that 23 of these children were never found.

He now beheld, as he imagined, one of the losers of the lost ones, and felt stricken.

“Well now,” said Giles to Mrs Frog, “let’s hear how you get along. What does your husband do?”

“He mostly does nothin’ but drink. Sometimes he sells little birds; sometimes he sells penny watches or boot-laces in Cheapside, an’ turns in a little that way, but it all goes to the grog-shop; none of it comes here. Then he has a mill now an’ again—”

“A mill?” said Sir Richard,—“is it a snuff or flour—”

“He’s a professional pugilist,” explained Giles.

“An’ he’s employed at a music-hall,” continued Mrs Frog, “to call out the songs an’ keep order. An’ Bobby always used to pick a few coppers by runnin’ messages, sellin’ matches, and odd jobs. But he’s knocked over now.”

“And yourself. How do you add to the general fund?” asked Sir Richard, becoming interested in the household management of Poverty.

“Well, I char a bit an’ wash a bit, sir, when I’m well enough—which ain’t often. An’ sometimes I lights the Jews’ fires for ’em, an’ clean up their ’earths on Saturdays—w’ich is their Sundays, sir. But Hetty works like a horse. It’s she as keeps us from the work’us, sir. She’s got employment at a slop shop, and by workin’ ’ard all day manages to make about one shillin’ a week.”

“I beg your pardon—how much?”

“One shillin’, sir.”

“Ah, you mean one shilling a day, I suppose.”

“No, sir, I mean one shillin’ a week. Mr Scott there knows that I’m tellin’ what’s true.”

Giles nodded, and Sir Richard said, “ha–a–hem,” having nothing more lucid to remark on such an amazing financial problem as was here set before him.

“But,” continued Mrs Frog, “poor Hetty has had a sad disappointment this week—”

“Oh! mother,” interrupted Hetty, “don’t trouble the gentleman with that. Perhaps he wouldn’t understand it, for of course he hasn’t heard about all the outs and ins of slop-work.”

“Pardon me, my good girl,” said Sir Richard, “I have not, as you truly remark, studied the details of slop-work minutely, but my mind is not unaccustomed to financial matters. Pray let me hear about this—”

A savage growling, something between a mastiff and a man, outside the door, here interrupted the visitor, and a hand was heard fumbling about the latch. As the hand seemed to lack skill to open the door the foot considerately took the duty in hand and burst it open, whereupon the huge frame of Ned Frog stumbled into the room and fell prostrate at the feet of Sir Richard, who rose hastily and stepped back.

The pugilist sprang up, doubled his ever ready fists, and, glaring at the knight, asked savagely:

“Who the—”

He was checked in the utterance of a ferocious oath, for at that moment he encountered the grave eye of Number 666.

Relaxing his fists he thrust them into his coat-pockets, and, with a subdued air, staggered out of the house.

“My ’usband, sir,” said Mrs Frog, in answer to her visitor’s inquiring glance.

“Oh! is that his usual mode of returning home?”

“No, sir,” answered Bobby from his corner, for he was beginning to be amused by the succession of surprises which Wealth was receiving, “’e don’t always come in so. Sometimes ’e sends ’is ’ead first an’ the feet come afterwards. In any case the furniture’s apt to suffer, not to mention the in’abitants, but you’ve saved us to-night, sir, or, raither, Mr Scott ’as saved both us an’ you.”

Poor little Di, who had been terribly frightened, clung closer to her father’s arm on hearing this.

“Perhaps,” said Sir Richard, “it would be as well that we should go, in case Mr Frog should return.”

He was about to say good-bye when Di checked him, and, despite her fears, urged a short delay.

“We haven’t heard, you know, about the slops yet. Do stop just one minute, dear papa. I wonder if it’s like the beef-tea nurse makes for me when I’m ill.”

“It’s not that kind of slops, darling, but ready-made clothing to which reference is made. But you are right. Let us hear about it, Miss Hetty.”

The idea of “Miss” being applied to Hetty, and slops compared to beef-tea proved almost too much for the broken-legged boy in the corner, but he put strong constraint on himself and listened.

“Indeed, sir, I do not complain,” said Hetty, quite distressed at being thus forcibly dragged into notice. “I am thankful for what has been sent—indeed I am—only it was a great disappointment, particularly at this time, when we so much needed all we could make amongst us.”

She stopped and had difficulty in restraining tears. “Go on, Hetty,” said her mother, “and don’t be afraid. Bless you, he’s not goin’ to report what you say.”

“I know that, mother. Well, sir, this was the way on it. They sometimes—”

“Excuse me—who are ‘they’?”

“I beg pardon, sir, I—I’d rather not tell.”

“Very well. I respect your feelings, my girl. Some slop-making firm, I suppose. Go on.”

“Yes, sir. Well—they sometimes gives me extra work to do at home. It do come pretty hard on me after goin’ through the regular day’s work, from early mornin’ till night, but then, you see, it brings in a little more money—and, I’m strong, thank God.”

Sir Richard looked at Hetty’s thin and colourless though pretty face, and thought it possible that she might be stronger with advantage.

“Of late,” continued the girl, “I’ve bin havin’ extra work in this way, and last week I got twelve children’s ulsters to make up. This job when finished would bring me six and sixpence.”

“How much?”

“Six and sixpence, sir.”

“For the whole twelve?” asked Sir Richard.

“Yes, sir—that was sixpence halfpenny for makin’ up each ulster. It’s not much, sir.”

“No,” murmured Wealth in an absent manner; “sixpence halfpenny is not much.”

“But when I took them back,” continued Hetty—and here the tears became again obstreperous and difficult to restrain—“the master said he’d forgot to tell me that this order was for the colonies, that he had taken it at a very low price, and that he could only give me three shillin’s for the job. Of—of course three shillin’s is better the nothin’, but after workin’ hard for such a long long time an’ expectin’ six, it was—”

Here the tears refused to be pent up any longer, and the poor girl quietly bending forward hid her face in her hand.

“Come, I think we will go now,” said Sir Richard, rising hastily. “Good-night, Mrs Frog, I shall probably see you again—at least—you shall hear from me. Now, Di—say good-night to your boy.”

In a few minutes Sir Richard stood outside, taking in deep draughts of the comparatively fresher air of the court.

“The old screw,” growled Bobby, when the door was shut. “’E didn’t leave us so much as a single bob—not even a brown, though ’e pretends that six of ’em ain’t much.”

“Don’t be hard on him, Bobby,” said Hetty, drying her eyes; “he spoke very kind, you know, an’ p’raps he means to help us afterwards.”

“Spoke kind,” retorted the indignant boy; “I tell ’ee wot, Hetty, you’re far too soft an’ forgivin’. I s’pose that’s wot they teaches you in Sunday-school at George Yard—eh? Vill speakin’ kind feed us, vill it clothe us, vill it pay for our lodgin’s!”

The door opened at that moment, and Number 666 re-entered.

“The gentleman sent me back to give you this, Mrs Frog,” laying a sovereign on the rickety table. “He said he didn’t like to offer it to you himself for fear of hurting your feelings, but I told him he needn’t be afraid on that score! Was I right, Missis? Look well after it, now, an’ see that Ned don’t get his fingers on it.”

Giles left the room, and Mrs Frog, taking up the piece of gold, fondled it for some time in her thin fingers, as though she wished to make quite sure of its reality. Then wrapping it carefully in a piece of old newspaper, she thrust it into her bosom.

Bobby gazed at her in silence up to this point, and then turned his face to the wall. He did not speak, but we cannot say that he did not pray, for, mentally he said, “I beg your parding, old gen’l’m’n, an’ I on’y pray that a lot of fellers like you may come ’ere sometimes to ’urt our feelin’s in that vay!”

At that moment Hetty bent over the bed, and, softly kissing her brother’s dirty face, whispered, “Yes, Bobby, that’s what they teach me in Sunday-school at George Yard.”

Thereafter Wealth drove home in a cab, and Poverty went to bed in her rags.

Chapter Seven.

Bicycling and its Occasional Results.

It is pleasant to turn from the smoke and turmoil of the city to the fresh air and quiet of the country.

To the man who spends most of his time in the heart of London, going into the country—even for a short distance—is like passing into the fields of Elysium. This was, at all events, the opinion of Stephen Welland; and Stephen must have been a good judge, for he tried the change frequently, being exceedingly fond of bicycling, and occasionally taking what he termed long spins on that remarkable instrument.

One morning, early in the summer-time, young Welland, (he was only eighteen), mounted his iron horse in the neighbourhood of Kensington, and glided away at a leisurely pace through the crowded streets. Arrived in the suburbs of London he got up steam, to use his own phrase, and went at a rapid pace until he met a “chum,” by appointment. This chum was also mounted on a bicycle, and was none other than our friend Samuel Twitter, Junior—known at home as Sammy, and by his companions as Sam.

“Isn’t it a glorious day, Sam?” said Welland as he rode up and sprang off his steed.

“Magnificent!” answered his friend, also dismounting and shaking hands. “Why, Stephen, what an enormous machine you ride!”

“Yes, it’s pretty high—48 inches. My legs are long, you see. Well, where are we to run to-day?”

“Wherever you like,” said Sam, “only let it be a short run, not more than forty miles, for I’ve got an appointment this afternoon with my old dad which I can’t get off.”

“That’ll do very well,” said Welland, “so we can go round by—”

Here he described a route by country road and village, which we pretend not to remember. It is sufficient to know that it represented the required “short” run of forty miles—such is the estimate of distance by the youth of the present day!

“Now then, off we go,” said Welland, giving his wheel—he quite ignored the existence of the little thing at the back—a shove, putting his left foot on the treadle, and flinging his right leg gracefully over.

Young Twitter followed suit, but Sammy was neither expert nor graceful. True, he could ride easily, and travel long distances, but he could only mount by means of the somewhat clumsy process of hopping behind for several yards.

Once up, however, he went swiftly enough alongside his tall companion, and the two friends thereafter kept abreast.

“Oh! isn’t it a charming sensation to have the cool air fanning one’s cheeks, and feel the soft tremor of the wheel, and see the trees and houses flow past at such a pace? It is the likest thing to flying I ever felt,” said Welland, as they descended a slight incline at, probably, fifteen miles an hour.

“It is delightful,” replied Sam, “but, I say, we better put on the brakes here a bit. It gets much steeper further down.”

Instead of applying the brake, however, young Welland, in the exuberance of his joy, threw his long legs over the handles, and went down the slope at railway speed, ready, as he remarked, for a jump if anything should go wrong.

Twitter was by no means as bold as his friend, but, being ashamed to show the white feather, he quietly threw his shorter legs over the handles, and thus the two, perched—from a fore-and-aft point of view—upon nothing, went in triumph to the bottom of the hill.

A long stretch of smooth level road now lay before them. It required the merest touch on the treadles to send them skimming along like skaters on smooth ice, or swallows flying low. Like gentle ghosts they fleeted along with little more than a muffled sound, for their axles turned in ball-sockets and their warning bells were silent save when touched.

Onward they went with untiring energy, mile after mile, passing everything on the way—pedestrians, equestrians, carts and gigs; driving over the level ground with easy force, taking the hills with a rush to keep up the pace, and descending on the other sides at what Welland styled a “lightning run.”

Now they were skimming along a road which skirted the margin of a canal, the one with hands in his coat-pockets, the other with his arms crossed, and both steering with their feet; now passing under a railway-arch, and giving a wild shout, partly to rouse the slumbering echoes that lodged there, and partly to rouse the spirit of a small dog which chanced to be passing under it—in both cases successfully! Anon they were gliding over a piece of exposed ground on which the sun beat with intense light, causing their shadows to race along with them. Again they were down in a hollow, gliding under a row of trees, where they shut off a little of the steam and removed their caps, the better to enjoy the grateful shade. Soon they were out in the sunshine again, the spokes of their wheels invisible as they topped a small eminence from the summit of which they took in one comprehensive view of undulating lands, with villages scattered all round, farm-houses here and there, green fields and flowering meadows, traversed by rivulet or canal, with cattle, sheep, and horses gazing at them in silent or startled wonder, and birds twittering welcome from the trees and hedge-rows everywhere.

Now they were crossing a bridge and nearing a small town where they had to put hands to the handles again and steer with precaution, for little dogs had a tendency to bolt out at them from unexpected corners, and poultry is prone to lose its heads and rush into the very jaws of danger, in a cackling effort to avoid it. Stray kittens and pigs, too, exhibited obstinate tendencies, and only gave in when it was nearly too late for repentance. Little children, also, became sources of danger, standing in the middle of roads until, perceiving a possible catastrophe, they dashed wildly aside—always to the very side on which the riders had resolved to pass,—and escaped by absolute miracle!

Presently they came to a steep hill. It was not steep enough to necessitate dismounting, but it rendered a rush inadvisable. They therefore worked up slowly, and, on gaining the top, got off to breathe and rest a while.

“That was a glorious run, wasn’t it, Sam?” said Welland, flicking the dust from his knees with his handkerchief. “What d’ye say to a glass of beer?”

“Can’t do it, Stephen, I’m Blue Ribbon.”

“Oh! nonsense. Why not do as I do—drink in moderation?”

“Well, I didn’t think much about it when I put it on,” said Sam, who was a very sensitive, and not very strong-minded youth; “the rest of us did it, you know, by father’s advice, and I joined because they did.”

Welland laughed rather sarcastically at this, but made no rejoinder, and Sam, who could not stand being laughed at, said—

“Well, come, I’ll go in for one glass. I’ll be my own doctor, and prescribe it medicinally! Besides, it’s an exceptional occasion this, for it is awfully hot.”

“It’s about the best run I ever had in the same space of time,” said Welland on quitting the beer shop.

“First-rate,” returned Sam, “I wish my old dad could ride with us. He would enjoy it so.”

“Couldn’t we bring him out on a horse? He could ride that, I suppose?”

“Never saw him on a horse but once,” said Sam, “and that time he fell off. But it’s worth suggesting to him.”

“Better if he got a tricycle,” said Welland.

“I don’t think that would do, for he’s too old for long rides, and too short-winded. Now, Stephen, I’m not going to run down this hill. We must take it easy, for it’s far too steep.”

“Nonsense, man, it’s nothing to speak of; see, I’ll go first and show you the way.”

He gave the treadle a thrust that sent him off like an arrow from a bow.

“Stay! there’s a caravan or something at the bottom—wild beasts’ show, I think! Stop! hold on!”

But Sam Twitter shouted in vain. Welland’s was a joyous spirit, apt to run away with him. He placed his legs over the handles for security, and allowed the machine to run. It gathered speed as it went, for the hill became steeper, insomuch that the rider once or twice felt the hind-wheel rise, and had to lean well back to keep it on the ground. The pace began to exceed even Welland’s idea of pleasure, but now it was too late to use the brake, for well did he know that on such a slope and going at such a pace the slightest check on the front wheel would send him over. He did not feel alarmed however, for he was now near the bottom of the hill, and half a minute more would send him in safety on the level road at the foot.

But just at the foot there was a sharpish turn in the road, and Welland looked at it earnestly. At an ordinary pace such a turn could have been easily taken, but at such a rate as he had by that time attained, he felt it would require a tremendous lean over to accomplish it. Still he lost no confidence, for he was an athlete by practice if not by profession, and he gathered up his energies for the moment of action.

The people of the caravan—whoever they were—had seen him coming, and, beginning to realise his danger to some extent, had hastily cleared the road to let him pass.

Welland considered the rate of speed; felt, rather than calculated, the angle of inclination; leaned over boldly until the tire almost slipped sideways on the road, and came rushing round with a magnificent sweep, when, horrible sight! a slight ridge of what is called road-metal crossed the entire road from side to side! A drain or water pipe had recently been repaired, and the new ridge had not yet been worn down by traffic. There was no time for thought or change of action. Another moment and the wheel was upon it, the crash came, and the rider went off with such force that he was shot well in advance of the machine, as it went with tremendous violence into the ditch. If Welland’s feet had been on the treadles he must have turned a complete somersault. As it was he alighted on his feet, but came to the ground with such force that he failed to save himself. One frantic effort he made and then went down headlong and rolled over on his back in a state of insensibility.

When Sam Twitter came to the bottom of the hill with the brake well applied he was able to check himself in time to escape the danger, and ran to where his friend lay.

For a few minutes the unfortunate youth lay as if he had been dead. Then his blood resumed its flow, and when the eyes opened he found Sam kneeling on one side of him with a smelling bottle which some lady had lent him, and a kindly-faced elderly man with an iron-grey beard kneeling on the other side and holding a cup of water to his lips.

“That’s right, Stephen, look up,” said Sam, who was terribly frightened, “you’re not much hurt, are you?”

“Hurt, old fellow, eh?” sighed Stephen, “why should I be hurt? Where am I? What has happened?”

“Take a sip, my young friend, it will revive you,” said the man with the kindly face. “You have had a narrow escape, but God has mercifully spared you. Try to move now; gently—we must see that no bones have been broken before allowing you to rise.”

By this time Welland had completely recovered, and was anxious to rise; all the more that a crowd of children surrounded him, among whom he observed several ladies and gentlemen, but he lay still until the kindly stranger had felt him all over and come to the conclusion that no serious damage had been done.

“Oh! I’m all right, thank you,” said the youth on rising, and affecting to move as though nothing had happened, but he was constrained to catch hold of the stranger rather suddenly, and sat down on the grass by the road-side.

“I do believe I’ve got a shake after all,” he said with a perplexed smile and sigh. “But,” he added, looking round with an attempt at gaiety, “I suspect my poor bicycle has got a worse shake. Do look after it, Sam, and see how it is.”

Twitter soon returned with a crestfallen expression. “It’s done for, Stephen. I’m sorry to say the whole concern seems to be mashed up into a kind of wire-fencing!”

“Is it past mending, Sam?”

“Past mending by any ordinary blacksmith, certainly. No one but the maker can doctor it, and I should think it would take him a fortnight at least.”

“What is to be done?” said Stephen, with some of his companion’s regret of tone. “What a fool I was to take such a hill—spoilt such a glorious day too—for you as well as myself, Sam. I’m very sorry, but that won’t mend matters.”

“Are you far from home, gentlemen?” asked the man with the iron-grey beard, who had listened to the conversation with a look of sympathy.

“Ay, much too far to walk,” said Welland. “D’you happen to know how far off the nearest railway station is?”

“Three miles,” answered the stranger, “and in your condition you are quite unfit to walk that distance.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” replied the youth, with a pitiful look. “I think I’m game for three miles, if I had nothing to carry but myself, but I can’t leave my bicycle in the ditch, you know!”

“Of course you can’t,” rejoined the stranger in a cheery tone, “and I think we can help you in this difficulty. I am a London City Missionary. My name is John Seaward. We have, as you see, brought out a number of our Sunday-school children, to give them a sight of God’s beautiful earth; poor things, they’ve been used to bricks, mortar, and stone all their lives hitherto. Now, if you choose to spend the remainder of the day with us, we will be happy to give you and the injured bicycle a place in our vans till we reach a cabstand or a railway station. What say you? It will give much pleasure to me and the teachers.”

Welland glanced at his friend. “You see, Sam, there’s no help for it, old boy. You’ll have to return alone.”

“Unless your friend will also join us,” said the missionary.

“You are very kind,” said Sam, “but I cannot stay, as I have an engagement which must be kept. Never mind, Stephen. I’ll just complete the trip alone, and comfort myself with the assurance that I leave you in good hands. So, good-bye, old boy.”

“Good-bye, Twitter,” said Stephen, grasping his friend’s hand.

“Twitter,” repeated the missionary, “I heard your friend call you Sam just now. Excuse my asking—are you related to Samuel Twitter of Twitter, Slime, and Company, in the city?”

“I’m his eldest son,” said Sam.

“Then I have much pleasure in making your acquaintance,” returned the other, extending his hand, “for although I have never met your father, I know your mother well. She is one of the best and most regular teachers in our Sunday-schools. Is she not, Hetty?” he said, turning to a sweet-faced girl who stood near him.

“Indeed she is, I was her pupil for some years, and now I teach one of her old classes,” replied the girl.

“I work in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, sir,” continued the missionary, “and most of the children here attend the Institution in George Yard.”

“Well, I shall tell my mother of this unexpected meeting,” said Sam, as he remounted his bicycle. “Good-bye, Stephen. Don’t romp too much with the children!”

“Adieu, Sam, and don’t break your neck on the bicycle.”

In a few minutes Sam Twitter and his bicycle were out of sight.

Chapter Eight.

A Great and Memorable Day.

When young Stephen Welland was conducted by John Seaward the missionary into a large field dotted with trees, close to where his accident had happened, he found that the children and their guardians were busily engaged in making arrangements for the spending of an enjoyable day.

And then he also found that this was not a mere monster excursion of ordinary Sunday-schools, but one of exceedingly poor children, whose garments, faces, and general condition, told too surely that they belonged to the lowest grade in the social scale.

“Yes,” said the missionary, in reply to some question from Welland, “the agency at George Yard, to which I have referred, has a wide-embracing influence—though but a small lump of leaven when compared with the mass of corruption around it. This is a flock of the ragged and utterly forlorn, to many of whom green fields and fresh air are absolutely new, but we have other flocks besides these.”

“Indeed! Well, now I look at them more carefully, I see that their garments do speak of squalid poverty. I have never before seen such a ragged crew, though I have sometimes encountered individuals of the class on the streets.”

“Hm!” coughed the missionary with a peculiar smile. “They are not so ragged as they were. Neither are they as ragged as they will be in an hour or two.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that these very rough little ones have to receive peculiar treatment before we can give them such an outing as they are having to-day. As you see, swings and see-saws have been put up here, toys are now being distributed, and a plentiful feast will ere long be forthcoming, through the kindness of a Christian gentleman whose heart the Lord has inclined to ‘consider the poor,’ but before we could venture to move the little band, much of their ragged clothing had to be stitched up to prevent it falling off on the journey, and we had to make them move carefully on their way to the train—for vans have brought us only part of the way. Now that they are here, our minds are somewhat relieved, but I suspect that the effect of games and romping will undo much of our handiwork. Come, let us watch them.”

The youth and the missionary advanced towards a group of the children, whose souls, for the time being, were steeped in a see-saw. This instrument of delight consisted of a strong plank balanced on the trunk of a noble tree which had been recently felled, with many others, to thin the woods of the philanthropist’s park. It was an enormous see-saw! such as the ragged creatures had never before seen—perhaps never conceived of, their experiences in such joys having been hitherto confined to small bits of broken plank placed over empty beer barrels, or back-yard fences. No fewer than eight children were able to find accommodation on it at one and the same time, besides one of the bigger boys to straddle in the centre; and it required the utmost vigilance on the part of a young man teacher at one end of the machine, and Hetty Frog at the other end, to prevent the little ragamuffins at either extremity from being forced off.

Already the missionary’s anticipation in regard to the undoing of their labour had begun to be verified. There were at least four of the eight whose nether garments had succumbed to the effort made in mounting the plank, and various patches of flesh-colour revealed the fact that the poor little wearers were innocent of flannels. But it was summer-time, and the fact had little effect either on wearers or spectators. The missionary, however, was not so absorbed in the present but that he felt impelled to remark to Welland: “That is their winter as well as summer clothing.”

The bicyclist said nothing in reply, but the remark was not lost upon him.

“Now, Dick Swiller,” said the young man teacher, “I see what you’re up to. You mustn’t do it!”

Richard Swiller, who was a particularly rugged as well as ragged boy of about thirteen, not being in the habit of taking advice, did do it. That is, he sent his end of the plank up with such violence that the other end came to the ground with a shock which caused those who sat there to gasp, while it all but unseated most of those who were on the higher end. Indeed one very small and pinched but intelligent little boy, named by his companions Blobby, who looked as if Time, through the influence of privation and suffering, had been dwindling instead of developing him,—actually did come off with a cry of alarm, which, however, changed into a laugh of glee when he found himself in his teacher’s arms, instead of lying “busted on the ground,” as he afterwards expressed it when relating the incident to an admiring audience of fellow ragamuffins in the slums of Spitalfields.

Blobby was immediately restored to his lost position, and Swiller was degraded, besides being made to stand behind a large tree for a quarter of an hour in forced inaction, so that he might have time to meditate on the evil consequences of disobedience.

“Take care, Robin,” said Hetty, to a very small but astonishingly energetic fellow, at her end of the see-saw, who was impressed with the notion that he was doing good service by wriggling his own body up and down, “if you go on so, you’ll push Lilly Snow off.”

Robin, unlike Dick, was obedient. He ceased his efforts, and thereby saved the last button which held his much too small waistcoat across his bare bosom.

“What a sweet face the child she calls Lilly Snow has—if it were only clean,” observed Welland. “A little soap and water with a hair brush would make her quite beautiful.”

“Yes, she is very pretty,” said the missionary and the kindly smile with which he had been watching the fun vanished, as he added in a sorrowful voice, “her case is a very sad one, dear child. Her mother is a poor but deserving woman who earns a little now and then by tailoring, but she has been crushed for years by a wicked and drunken husband who has at last deserted her. We know not where he is, perhaps dead. Five times has her home been broken up by him, and many a time has she with her little one been obliged to sit on doorsteps all night, when homeless. Little Lilly attends our Sunday-school regularly, and Hetty is her teacher. It is not long since Hetty herself was a scholar, and I know that she is very anxious to lead Lilly to the Lord. The sufferings and sorrows to which this poor child has been exposed have told upon her severely, and I fear that her health will give way. A day in the country like this may do her good perhaps.”

As the missionary spoke little Lilly threw up her arms and uttered a cry of alarm. Robin, although obedient, was short of memory, and his energetic spirit being too strong for his excitable little frame he had recommenced his wriggling, with the effect of bursting the last button off his waistcoat and thrusting Lilly off the plank. She was received, however, on Hetty’s breast, who fell with her to the ground.

“Not hurt, Hetty!” exclaimed the missionary, running forward to help the girl up.

“Oh! no, sir,” replied Hetty with a short laugh, as she rose and placed Lilly on a safer part of the see-saw.

“Come here, Hetty,” said John Seaward, “and rest a while. You have done enough just now; let some one else take your place.”

After repairing the buttonless waistcoat with a pin and giving its owner a caution, Hetty went and sat down on the grass beside the missionary.

“How is Bobby?” asked the latter, “I have not found a moment to speak to you till now.”

“Thank you, sir, he’s better; much better. I fear he will be well too soon.”

“How so? That’s a strange remark, my girl.”

“It may seem strange, sir, but—you know—father’s very fond of Bobby.”

“Well, Hetty, that’s not a bad sign of your father.”

“Oh but, sir, father sits at his bedside when he’s sober, an’ has such long talks with him about robberies and burglaries, and presses him very hard to agree to go out with him when he’s well. I can’t bear to hear it, for dear Bobby seems to listen to what he says, though sometimes he refuses, and defies him to do his worst, especially when he—”

“Stay, dear girl. It is very very sad, but don’t tell me anything more about your father. Tell it all to Jesus, Hetty. He not only sympathises with, but is able to save—even to the uttermost.”

“Yes, thank God for that ‘uttermost,’” said the poor girl, clasping her hands quickly together. “Oh, I understood that when He saved me, and I will trust to it now.”

“And the gentleman who called on you,—has he been again?” asked the missionary.

“No, sir, he has only come once, but he has sent his butler three or four times with some money for us, and always with the message that it is from Miss Diana, to be divided between Bobby and me. Unfortunately father chanced to be at home the first time he came and got it all, so we got none of it. But he was out the other times. The butler is an oldish man, and a very strange one. He went about our court crying.”

“Crying! Hetty, that’s a curious condition for an oldish butler to be in.”

“Oh, of course I don’t mean cryin’ out like a baby,” said Hetty, looking down with a modest smile, “but I saw tears in his eyes, and sometimes they got on his cheeks. I can’t think what’s the matter with him.”

Whatever Mr Seaward thought on this point he said nothing, but asked if Bobby was able to go out.

Oh yes, he was quite able to walk about now with a little help, Hetty said, and she had taken several walks with him and tried to get him to speak about his soul, but he only laughed at that, and said he had too much trouble with his body to think about his soul—there was time enough for that!

They were interrupted at this point by a merry shout of glee, and, looking up, found that young Welland had mounted the see-saw, taken Lilly Snow in front of him, had Dick Swiller reinstated to counterbalance his extra weight, and was enjoying himself in a most hilarious manner among the fluttering rags. Assuredly, the fluttering rags did not enjoy themselves a whit less hilariously than he.

In this condition he was found by the owner of the grounds, George Brisbane, Esquire, of Lively Hall, who, accompanied by his wife, and a tall, dignified friend with a little girl, approached the see-saw.

“I am glad you enjoy yourself so much, my young friend,” he said to Welland; “to which of the ragged schools may you belong?”

In much confusion—for he was rather shy—Welland made several abortive efforts to check the see-saw, which efforts Dick Swiller resisted to the uttermost, to the intense amusement of a little girl who held Mrs Brisbane’s hand. At last he succeeded in arresting it and leaped off.

“I beg pardon,” he said, taking off his cap to the lady as he advanced, “for intruding uninvited on—”

“Pray don’t speak of intrusion,” interrupted Mr Brisbane, extending his hand; “if you are here as Mr Seaward’s friend you are a welcome guest. Your only intrusion was among the little ones, but as they seem not to resent it neither do I.”

Welland grasped the proffered hand. “Thank you very much,” he returned, “but I can scarcely lay claim to Mr Seaward’s friendship. The fact is, I am here in consequence of an accident to my bicycle.”

“Oh! then you are one of the poor unfortunates after all,” said the host. “Come, you are doubly welcome. Not hurt much, I hope. No? That’s all right. But don’t let me keep you from your amusements. Remember, we shall expect you at the feast on the lawn. You see, Sir Richard,” he added, turning to his dignified friend, “when we go in for this sort of thing we don’t do it by halves. To have any lasting effect, it must make a deep impression. So we have got up all sorts of amusements, as you observe, and shall have no fewer than two good feeds. Come, let us visit some other—Why, what are you gazing at so intently?”

He might well ask the question, for Sir Richard Brandon had just observed Hetty Frog, and she, unaccustomed to such marked attention, was gazing in perplexed confusion on the ground. At the same time little Di, having caught sight of her, quitted Mrs Brisbane, ran towards her with a delighted scream, and clasping her hand in both of hers, proclaimed her the sister of “my boy!”

Hetty’s was not the nature to refuse such affection. Though among the poorest of the poor, and clothed in the shabbiest and most patchy of garments, (which in her case, however, were neat, clean and well mended), she was rich in a loving disposition; so that, forgetting herself and the presence of others, she stooped and folded the little girl in her arms. And, when the soft brown hair and pale pretty face of Poverty were thus seen as it were co-mingling with the golden locks and rosy cheeks of Wealth, even Sir Richard was forced to admit to himself that it was not after all a very outrageous piece of impropriety!

“Oh! I’m so glad to hear that he’s much better, and been out too! I would have come to see him again long long ago, but p—”

She checked herself, for Mrs Screwbury had carefully explained to her that no good girl ever said anything against her parents; and little Di had swallowed the lesson, for, when not led by passion, she was extremely teachable.

“And oh!” she continued, opening her great blue lakelets to their widest state of solemnity, “you haven’t the smallest bit of notion how I have dreamt about my boy—and my policeman too! I never can get over the feeling that they might both have been killed, and if they had, you know, it would have been me that did it; only think! I would have—been—a murderer! P’raps they’d have hanged me!”

“But they weren’t killed, dear,” said Hetty, unable to restrain a smile at the awful solemnity of the child, and the terrible fate referred to.

“No—I’m so glad, but I can’t get over it,” continued Di, while those near to her stood quietly by unable to avoid overhearing, even if they had wished to do so. “And they do such strange things in my dreams,” continued Di, “you can’t think. Only last night I was in our basket-cart—the dream-one, you know, not the real one—and the dream-pony ran away again, and gave my boy such a dreadful knock that he fell flat down on his back, tumbled over two or three times, and rose up—a policeman! Not my policeman, you know, but quite another one that I had never seen before! But the very oddest thing of all was that it made me so angry that I jumped with all my might on to his breast, and when I got there it wasn’t the policeman but the pony! and it was dead—quite dead, for I had killed it, and I wasn’t sorry at all—not a bit!”

This was too much for Hetty, who burst into a laugh, and Sir Richard thought it time to go and see the games that were going on in other parts of the field, accompanied by Welland and the missionary, while Hetty returned to her special pet Lilly Snow.

And, truly, if “one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” there were touches of nature enough seen that day among these outcasts of society to have warranted their claiming kin with the whole world.

Leap-frog was greatly in favour, because the practitioners could abandon themselves to a squirrel-and-cat sort of bound on the soft grass, which they had never dared to indulge in on the London pavements. It was a trying game, however, to the rags, which not only betrayed their character to the eye by the exhibition of flesh-tints through numerous holes, but addressed themselves also to the ears by means of frequent and explosive rendings. Pins, however, were applied to the worst of these with admirable though temporary effect, and the fun became faster and more furious,—especially so when the points of some of the pins touched up the flesh-tints unexpectedly.

On these occasions the touches of nature became strongly pronounced—expressing themselves generally in a yell. Another evidence of worldly kinship was, that the touched-up ones, instead of attributing the misfortune to accident, were prone to turn round with fierce scowl and doubled fists under the impression that a guilty comrade was in rear!

The proceedings were totally arrested for one hour at mid-day, when unlimited food was issued, and many of the forlorn ones began to feel the rare sensation of being stuffed quite full and rendered incapable of wishing for more! But this was a mere interlude. Like little giants refreshed they rose up again to play—to swing, to leap, to wrestle, to ramble, to gather flowers, to roll on the grass, to bask in the gladdening sunshine, and, in some cases, to thank God for all His mercies, in spite of the latent feeling of regret that there was so little of all that enjoyment in the slums, and dark courts, and filthy back-streets of the monster city.

Of course all the pins were extracted in this second act of the play, and innumerable new and gaping wounds were introduced into the clothing, insomuch that all ordinary civilised people, except philanthropists, would have been shocked with the appearance of the little ones.

But it was during the third and closing act of the play that the affair culminated. The scene was laid on the lawn in front of Mr Brisbane’s mansion.

Enter, at one end of the lawn, a band of small and dirty but flushed and happy boys and girls, in rags which might appropriately be styled ribbons. At the other end of the lawn a train of domestics bearing trays with tea, cakes, buns, pies, fruits, and other delectable things, to which the ragged army sits down.

Enter host and hostess, with Sir Richard, friends and attendants.

(Host.)—after asking a blessing—“My little friends, this afternoon we meet to eat, and only one request have I to make—that you shall do your duty well.” (Small boy in ribbons.—“Von’t I, just!”) “No platter shall return to my house till it be empty. No little one shall quit these premises till he be full; what cannot be eaten must be carried away.”

(The ragged army cheers.)

(Host.)—“Enough. Fall-to.”

(They fall-to.)

(Little boy in tatters, pausing.)—“I shan’t fall two, I’ll fall three or four.”

(Another little boy, in worse tatters.)—“So shall I.”

(First little boy.)—“I say, Jim, wot would mother say if she was here?”

(Jim.)—“She’d say nothin’. ’Er mouth ’ud be too full to speak.”

(Prolonged silence. Only mastication heard, mingled with a few cases of choking, which are promptly dealt with.)

(Blobby, with a sigh.)—“I say, Robin, I’m gettin’ tight.”

(Robin, with a gasp.)—“So am I; I’m about bustin’.”

(Blobby, coming to another pause.)—“I say, Robin, I’m as full as I can ’old. So’s all my pockits, an’ there’s some left over!”

(Robin—sharply.)—“Stick it in your ’at, then.”

(Blobby takes off his billycock, thrusts the remnant of food therein, and puts it on.)

Enter the brass band of the neighbouring village, (the bandsmen being boys), which plays a selection of airs, and sends a few of the smaller ragamuffins to sleep.

(Sir Richard Brandon, confidentially to his friend.)—“It is an amazing sight.”

(Host.)—“Would that it were a more common sight!”

Enter more domestics with more tea, buns, and fruit; but the army is glutted, and the pockets are brought into requisition: much pinning being a necessary consequence.

(Lilly Snow, softly.)—“It’s like ’eaven!”

(Hetty, remonstratingly.)—“Oh! Lilly, ’eaven is quite different.”

(Dick Swiller.)—“I’m sorry for it. Couldn’t be much ’appier to my mind.”

(Host.)—“Now, dear boys and girls, before we close the proceedings of this happy day, my excellent friend, your missionary, Mr Seaward, will say a few words.”

John Seaward steps to the front, and says a few words—says them so well, too, so simply, so kindly, yet so heartily, that the army is roused to a pitch of great enthusiasm; but we leave this speech to the reader’s imagination: after which— Exeunt Omnes.

And, as the curtain of night falls on these ragged ones, scattered now, many of them, to varied homes of vice, and filth, and misery, the heavy eyelids close to open again, perchance, in ecstatic dreams of food, and fun and green fields, fresh air and sunshine, which impress them more or less with the idea embodied in the aphorism, that “God made the country, but man made the town.”

Chapter Nine.

How the Poor are Succoured.

“I am obliged to you, Mr Seaward, for coming out of your way to see me,” said Sir Richard Brandon, while little Di brought their visitor a chair. “I know that your time is fully occupied, and would not have asked you to call had not my friend Mr Brisbane assured me that you had to pass my house daily on your way to—to business.”

“No apology, Sir Richard, pray. I am at all times ready to answer a call whether of the poor or the rich, if by any means I may help my Lord’s cause.”

The knight thought for a moment that he might claim to be classed among the poor, seeing that his miserable pittance of five thousand barely enabled him to make the two ends meet, but he only said:

“Ever since we had the pleasure of meeting at that gathering of ragged children, my little girl here has been asking so many questions about poor people—the lower orders, I mean—which I could not answer, that I have asked you to call, that we may get some information about them. You see, Diana is an eccentric little puss,” (Di opened her eyes very wide at this, wondering what “eccentric” could mean), “and she has got into a most unaccountable habit of thinking and planning about poor people.”

“A good habit, Sir Richard,” said the missionary. “‘Blessed are they that consider the poor.’”

Sir Richard acknowledged this remark with a little bow. “Now, we should like to ask, if you have no objection, what is your chief object in the mission at—what did you say its name—ah! George Yard?”

“To save souls,” said Mr Seaward.

“Oh—ah—precisely,” said the knight, taken somewhat aback by the nature and brevity of the answer, “that of course; but I meant, how do you proceed? What is the method, and what the machinery that you put in motion?”

“Perhaps,” said the missionary, drawing a small pamphlet from his pocket, “this will furnish you with all the information you desire. You can read it over to Miss Diana at your leisure—and don’t return it; I have plenty more. Meanwhile I may briefly state that the mission premises are in George Yard, High Street, Whitechapel, one of the worst parts of the east of London, where the fire of sin and crime rages most fiercely; where the soldiers of the Cross are comparatively few, and would be overwhelmed by mere numbers, were it not that they are invincible, carrying on the war as they do in the strength of Him who said, ‘Lo, I am with you alway.’

“In the old coaching days,” continued Mr Seaward, “this was a great centre, a starting-point for mail-coaches. For nigh thirty years the mission has been there. The ‘Black Horse’ was a public-house in George Yard, once known to the magistrates as one of the worst gin-shops and resort of thieves and nurseries of crime in London. That public-house is now a shelter for friendless girls, and a place where sick children of the poor are gratuitously fed.”

From this point the missionary went off into a graphic account of incidents illustrative of the great work done by the mission, and succeeded in deeply interesting both Diana and her father, though the latter held himself well in hand, knowing, as he was fond of remarking, that there were two sides to every question.

Checking his visitor at one point, he said, “You have mentioned ragged schools and the good that is done by them, but why should not the school-boards look after such children?”

“Because, Sir Richard, the school-boards cannot reach them. There are upwards of 150,000 people in London who have never lived more than three months in one place. No law reaches this class, because they do not stay long enough in any neighbourhood for the school-board authorities to put the law into operation. Now, nearly three hundred of the children of these wanderers meet in our Free Ragged Day Schools twice a day for instruction. Here we teach them as efficiently as we can in secular matters, and of course they are taught the Word of God, and told of Jesus the Saviour of sinners; but our difficulties are great, for children as well as parents are often in extremest poverty, the former suffering from hunger even when sent to school—and they never stay with us long. Let me give you an instance:—

“One morning a mother came and begged to have her children admitted. She had just left the workhouse. Three children in rags, that did not suffice to cover much less to protect them, stood by her side. She did not know where they were to sleep that night, but hoped to obtain a little charing and earn enough to obtain a lodging somewhere. She could not take the children with her while seeking work—Would we take them in? for, if not, they would have to be left in the streets, and as they were very young they might lose themselves or be run over. We took them in, fed, sympathised with, and taught them. In the afternoon the mother returned weary, hungry, dejected. She had failed to obtain employment, and took the children away to apply for admission to a casual ward.”

“What is a casual ward, Mr Missionary?” asked Di.

“Seaward, my love,—his name is not Missionary,” said Sir Richard.

“A casual ward,” answered the visitor, “is an exceedingly plain room with rows of very poor beds; mere wooden frames with canvas stretched on them, in which any miserable beggars who choose to submit to the rules may sleep for a night after eating a bit of bread and a basin of gruel—for all which they pay nothing. It is a very poor and comfortless place—at least you would think it so—and is meant to save poor people from sleeping, perhaps dying, in the streets.”

“Do some people sleep in the streets?” asked Di in great surprise.

“Yes, dear, I’m sorry to say that many do.”

“D’you mean on the stones, in their night-dresses?” asked the child with increasing surprise.

“Yes, love,” said her father, “but in their ordinary clothes, not in their night-dresses—they have no night-dresses.”

Little Di had now reached a pitch of surprise which rendered her dumb, so the missionary continued:

“Here is another case. A poor widow called once, and said she would be so grateful if we would admit her little girl and boy into the schools. She looked clean and tidy, and the children had not been neglected. She could not afford to pay for them, as she had not a penny in the world, and applied to us because we made no charge. The children were admitted and supplied with a plain but nourishing meal, while their mother went away to seek for work. We did not hear how she sped, but she had probably taken her case to God, and found Him faithful, for she had said, before going away, ‘I know that God is the Father of the fatherless, and the husband of the widow.’

“Again, another poor woman came. Her husband had fallen sick. Till within a few days her children had been at a school and paid for, but now the bread-winner was ill—might never recover—and had gone to the hospital. These children were at once admitted, and in each case investigation was made to test the veracity of the applicants.

“Of course,” continued the missionary, “I have spoken chiefly about the agencies with which I happen to have come personally in contact, but it must not be supposed that therefore I ignore or am indifferent to the other grand centres of influence which are elsewhere at work in London; such as, for instance, the various agencies set agoing and superintended by Dr Barnardo, whose Home for Working and Destitute Boys, in Stepney Causeway, is a shelter from which thousands of rescued little ones go forth to labour as honest and useful members of society, instead of dying miserably in the slums of London, or growing up to recruit the ranks of our criminal classes. These agencies, besides rescuing destitute and neglected children, include Homes for destitute girls and for little boys in Ilford and Jersey, an Infirmary for sick children of the destitute classes in Stepney, Orphan Homes, Ragged and Day schools, Free dinner-table to destitute children, Mission Halls, Coffee Palaces, and, in short, a grand net-work of beneficent agencies—Evangelistic, Temperance, and Medical—for the conduct of which is required not far short of One Hundred Pounds a day!”

Even Sir Richard Brandon, with all his supposed financial capacities, seemed struck with the magnitude of this sum.

“And where does Dr Barnardo obtain so large an amount?” he asked.

“From the voluntary gifts of those who sympathise with and consider the poor,” replied Seaward.

“Then,” he added, “there is that noble work carried on by Miss Rye of the Emigration Home for Destitute Little Girls, at the Avenue House, Peckham, from which a stream of destitute little ones continually flows to Canada, where they are much wanted, and who, if allowed to remain here, would almost certainly be lost. Strong testimony to the value of this work has been given by the Bishops of Toronto and Niagara, and other competent judges. Let me mention a case of one of Miss Rye’s little ones, which speaks for itself.

“A little girl of six was deserted by both father and mother.”

“Oh! poor little thing!” exclaimed the sympathetic Di, with an amazing series of pitiful curves about her eyebrows.

“Yes, poor indeed!” responded Seaward. “The mother forsook her first; then her father took her on the tramp, but the little feet could not travel fast enough, so he got tired of her and offered her to a workhouse. They refused her, so the tramping was continued, and at last baby was sold for three shillings to a stranger man. On taking his purchase home, however, the man found that his wife was unwilling to receive her; he therefore sent poor little baby adrift in the streets of London!”

“What a shame!” cried Di, with flashing orbs.

“Was it not? But, when father and mother cast this little one off, the Lord cared for it. An inspector of police, who found it, took it to his wife, and she carried it to Miss Rye’s Home, where it was at once received and cared for, and, doubtless, this little foundling girl is now dwelling happily and usefully with a Canadian family.”

“How nice!” exclaimed Di, her eyes, lips, and teeth bearing eloquent witness to her satisfaction.

“But no doubt you have heard of Miss Rye’s work, as well as that of Miss Annie Macpherson at the Home of Industry, and, perhaps, contributed to—”

“No,” interrupted Sir Richard, quickly, “I do not contribute; but pray, Mr Seaward, are there other institutions of this sort in London?”

“Oh! yes, there are several, it would take me too long to go into the details of the various agencies we have for succouring the poor. There is, among others, The Church of England ‘Central Home for Waifs and Strays,’ with a ‘Receiving House’ for boys in Upper Clapton, and one for girls in East Dulwich, with the Archbishop of Canterbury for its President. Possibly you may have heard of the ‘Strangers’ Rest,’ in Saint George Street, Ratcliff Highway, where, as far as man can judge, great and permanent good is being constantly done to the souls of sailors. A sailor once entered this ‘Rest’ considerably the worse for drink. He was spoken to by Christian friends, and asked to sign the pledge. He did so, and has now been steadfast for years. Returning from a long voyage lately, he went to revisit the Rest, and there, at the Bible-class, prayed. Part of his prayer was— ‘God bless the Strangers’ Rest. O Lord, we thank Thee for this place, and we shall thank Thee to all eternity.’ This is a sample of the feeling with which the place is regarded by those who have received blessing there. In the same street, only a few doors from this Rest, is the ‘Sailor’s Welcome Home.’ This is more of a home than the other, for it furnishes lodging and unintoxicating refreshment, while its devoted soul-loving manager, Miss Child, and her assistant workers, go fearlessly into the very dens of iniquity, and do all they can to bring sailors to Jesus, and induce them to take the pledge against strong drink, in which work they are, through God’s blessing, wonderfully successful. These two missions work, as it were, into each other’s hands. In the ‘Rest’ are held prayer-meetings and Bible-classes, and when these are dismissed, the sailors find the open door of the ‘Welcome Home’ ready to receive them, and the inmates there seek to deepen the good influence that has been brought to bear at the meetings—and this in the midst of one of the very worst parts of London, where temptation to every species of evil is rampant, on the right-hand and on the left, before and behind.

“But, Sir Richard, although I say that a grand and extensive work of salvation to soul, body, and spirit is being done to thousands of men, and women, and children, by the agencies which I have mentioned, and by many similar agencies which I have not now time to mention, as well as by the band of City Missionaries to which I have the honour to belong, I would earnestly point out that these all put together only scratch the surface of the vast mass of corruption which has to be dealt with in this seething world of London, the population of which is, as you are aware, equal to that of all Scotland; and very specially would I remark that the work is almost exclusively carried on by the voluntary contributions of those who ‘consider the poor!’

“The little tract which I have given you will explain much of the details of this great work, as carried on in the George Yard Mission. When you have read that, if you desire it, I will call on you again. Meanwhile engagements compel me to take my leave.”

After luncheon, that day, Sir Richard drew his chair to the window, but instead of taking up the newspaper and recommending his little one to visit the nursery, he said:

“Come here, Di. You and I will examine this pamphlet—this little book—and I’ll try to explain it, for reports are usually very dry.”

Di looked innocently puzzled. “Should reports always be wet, papa?”

Sir Richard came nearer to the confines of a laugh than he had reached for a long time past.

“No, love—not exactly wet, but—hm—you shall hear. Draw the stool close to my knee and lay your head on it.”

With his large hand on the golden tresses, Sir Richard Brandon began to examine the record of work done in the George Yard Mission.

“What is this?” he said. “Toy Classes,—why, this must be something quite in your way, Di.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure of that, for I adore toys. Tell me about it.”

“These toy classes are for the cheerless and neglected,” said the knight, frowning in a businesslike way at the pamphlet. “Sometimes so many as eighty neglected little ones attend these classes. On one occasion, only one of these had boots on, which were very old, much too large, and both lefts. When they were seated, toys and scrap-books were lent to them. There were puzzles, and toy-bricks, and many other things which kept them quite happy for an hour. Of course the opportunity was seized to tell them about Jesus and His love. A blessed lesson which they would not have had a chance of learning at home—if they had homes; but many of them had none. When it was time to go they said—‘Can’t we stay longer?’

“The beginning of this class was interesting,” said Sir Richard, continuing to read. “The thought arose—‘gather in the most forlorn and wretched children; those who are seldom seen to smile, or heard to laugh; there are many such who require Christian sympathy.’ The thought was immediately acted on. A little barefooted ragged boy was sent into the streets to bring in the children. Soon there was a crowd round the school-door. The most miserable among the little ones were admitted. The proceedings commenced with prayer—then the toys were distributed, the dirty little hands became active, and the dirty little faces began to look happy. When the toys were gathered up, some could not be found, so, at the next meeting, some of the bigger children were set to watch the smaller ones. Presently one little detective said: ‘Please, teacher, Teddy’s got a horse in his pocket,’ and another said that Sally had an elephant in her pinafore! Occasion was thus found to show the evil of stealing, and teach the blessedness of honesty. They soon gave up pilfering, and they now play with the toys without desiring to take them away.”

“How nice!” said Di. “Go on, papa.”

“What can this be?” continued Sir Richard, quoting—“Wild Flowers of the Forest Day Nursery. Oh! I see—very good idea. I’ll not read it, Di, I’ll tell you about it. There are many poor widows, you must know, and women whose husbands are bad, who have no money to buy food and shelter for themselves and little ones except what they can earn each day. But some of these poor women have babies, and they can’t work, you know, with babies in their arms, neither can they leave the babies at home with no one to look after them, except, perhaps, little sisters or brothers not much older than themselves, so they take their babies to this Cradle-Home, and each pays only twopence, for which small sum her baby is taken in, washed, clothed, warmed, fed, and amused by kind nurses, who keep it till the mother returns from her work to get it back again. Isn’t that good?”

“Oh! yes,” assented Di, with all her heart.

“And I read here,” continued her father, “that thousands of the infants of the poor die every year because they have not enough food, or enough clothing to keep them warm.”

“Oh what a pity!” exclaimed Di, the tears of ready sympathy rushing hot into her upturned eyes.

“So you see,” continued Sir Richard, who had unconsciously, as it were, become a pleader for the poor, “if there were a great many nurseries of this kind all over London, a great many little lives would be saved.”

“And why are there not a great many nurseries of that kind, papa?”

“Well, I suppose, it is because there are no funds.”

“No what? papa.”

“Not enough of money, dear.”

“Oh! what a pity! I wish I had lots and lots of money, and then wouldn’t I have Cradle-Homes everywhere?”

Sir Richard, knowing that he had “lots and lots” of money, but had not hitherto contributed one farthing to the object under consideration, thought it best to change the subject by going on with the George Yard Record.

But we will not conduct the reader through it all—interesting though the subject certainly is. Suffice it to say that he found the account classed under several heads. Under “Feeding the Hungry,” for instance, he learned that many poor children are entirely without food, sometimes, for a whole day, so that only two courses are open to them—to steal food and become criminals, or drift into sickness and die. From which fate many hundreds are annually rescued by timely aid at George Yard, the supplies for which are sent by liberal-minded Christians in all ranks of life—from Mr Crackaby with his 150 pounds a year, up through Mr Brisbane and his class to the present Earl of Shaftesbury—who, by the way, has taken a deep interest and lent able support to this particular Mission for more than a quarter of a century. But the name of Sir Richard Brandon did not appear on the roll of contributors. He had not studied the “lower orders” much, except from a politico-economical-argumentative after-dinner-port-winey point of view.

Under the head of “Clothing necessitous Children,” he found that some of the little ones presented themselves at the school-door in such a net-work of rags, probably infected, as to be unfit even for a Ragged School. They were therefore taken in, had their garments destroyed, and were supplied with new clothes. Also, that about 1000 children between the ages of three and fourteen years were connected with the Institution—scattered among the various works of usefulness conducted for the young.

Under “Work among Lads,” he found that those big boys whom one sees idling about corners of streets, fancying themselves men, smoking with obvious dislike and pretended pleasure, and on the highroad to the jail and the gallows—that those boys were enticed into classes opened for carpentry, turning, fretwork, and other attractive industrial pursuits—including even printing, at a press supplied by Lord Shaftesbury. This, in connection with evening classes for reading, writing, and arithmetic—the whole leading up to the grand object and aim of all—the salvation of souls.

Under other heads he found that outcast boys were received, sheltered, sent to Industrial Homes, or returned to friends and parents; that temperance meetings were held, and drunkards, male and female, sought out, prayed for, lovingly reasoned with, and reclaimed from this perhaps the greatest curse of the land; that Juvenile Bands of Hope were formed, on the ground of prevention being better than cure; that lodging-houses, where the poorest of the poor, and the lowest of the low do congregate, were visited, and the gospel proclaimed to ears that were deaf to nearly every good influence; that mothers’ meetings were held—one of them at that old headquarters of sin, the “Black Horse,” where counsel and sympathy were mingled with a Clothing Club and a Bible-woman; that there were a Working Men’s Benefit Society, Bible-Classes, Sunday-School, a Sewing-Class, a Mutual Labour Loan Society, a Shelter for Homeless Girls, a library, an Invalid Children’s Dinner, a bath-room and lavatory, a Flower Mission, and—hear it, ye who fancy that a penny stands very low in the scale of financial littleness—a Farthing Bank! All this free—conducted by an unpaid band of considerably over a hundred Christian workers, male and female—and leavening the foundations of society, without which, and similar missions, there would be very few leavening influences at all, and the superstructure of society would stand a pretty fair chance of being burst up or blown to atoms—though the superstructure is not very willing to believe the fact!

In addition to all this, Sir Richard learned, to his great amazement, that the Jews won’t light their fires on the Sabbath-day—that is, on our Saturday—that they won’t even poke it, and that this abstinence is the immediate cause of a source of revenue to the un-Jewish poor, whom the Jews hire to light and poke their fires for them.

And, lastly, Sir Richard Brandon learned that Mr George Holland, who had managed that mission for more than quarter of a century, was resolved, in the strength of the Lord, to seek out the lost and rescue the perishing, even though he, Sir Richard, and all who resembled him, should refuse to aid by tongue or hand in the glorious work of rescuing the poor from sin and its consequences.

Chapter Ten.

Balls, Bobby, Sir Richard, and Giles appear on the Stage.

As from the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step, so, from the dining-room to the kitchen there is but a stair. Let us descend the stair and learn that while Sir Richard was expounding the subject of “the poor” to little Di, Mr Balls, the butler, was engaged on the same subject in the servants’ hall.

“I cannot tell you,” said Balls, “what a impression the sight o’ these poor people made on me.”

“La! Mr Balls,” said the cook, who was not unacquainted with low life in London, having herself been born within sound of Bow-Bells, “you’ve got no occasion to worrit yourself about it. It ’as never bin different.”

“That makes it all the worse, cook,” returned Balls, standing with his back to the fireplace and his legs wide apart; “if it was only a temporary depression in trade, or the repeal of the corn laws that did it, one could stand it, but to think that such a state of things always goes on is something fearful. You know I’m a country-bred man myself, and ain’t used to the town, or to such awful sights of squalor. It almost made me weep, I do assure you. One room that I looked into had a mother and two children in it, and I declare to you that the little boy was going about stark naked, and his sister was only just a slight degree better.”

“P’raps they was goin’ to bed,” suggested Mrs Screwbury.

“No, nurse, they wasn’t; they was playing about evidently in their usual costume—for that evenin’ at least. I would not have believed it if I had not seen it. And the mother was so tattered and draggled and dirty—which, also, was the room.”

“Was that in the court where the Frogs live?” asked Jessie Summers.

“It was, and a dreadful court too—shocking!”

“By the way, Mr Balls,” asked the cook, “is there any chance o’ that brat of a boy Bobby, as they call him, coming here? I can’t think why master has offered to take such a creeter into his service.”

“No, cook, there is no chance. I forgot to tell you about that little matter. The boy was here yesterday and he refused—absolutely declined a splendid offer.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” returned the cook.

“Tell us about it, Mr Balls,” said Jessie Summers with a reproachful look at the other. “I’m quite fond of that boy—he’s such a smart fellow, and wouldn’t be bad-looking if he’d only wash his face and comb his hair.”

“He’s smart enough, no doubt, but impudence is his strong point,” rejoined the butler with a laugh. The way he spoke to the master beats everything.

“‘I’ve sent for you, my boy,’ said Sir Richard, in his usual dignified, kindly way, ‘to offer you the situation of under-gardener in my establishment.’”

“‘Oh! that’s wot you wants with me, is it?’ said the boy, as bold as brass; indeed I may say as bold as gun-metal, for his eyes an’ teeth glittered as he spoke, and he said it with the air of a dook. Master didn’t quite seem to like it, but I saw he laid restraint on himself and said: ‘You have to thank my daughter for this offer—’

“‘Thank you, Miss,’ said the boy, turnin’ to Miss Di with a low bow, imitatin’ Sir Richard’s manner, I thought, as much as he could.

“‘Of course,’ continued the master, rather sharply, ‘I offer you this situation out of mere charity—’

“‘Oh! you do, do you?’ said the extraordinary boy in the coolest manner, ‘but wot if I objec’ to receive charity? Ven I ’olds a ’orse I expecs to be paid for so doin’, same as you expecs to be paid w’en you attends a board-meetin’ to grin an’ do nuffin.’

“‘Come, come, boy,’ said Sir Richard, gettin’ redder in the face than I ever before saw him, ‘I am not accustomed to low pleasantry, and—’

“‘An’ I ain’t accustomed,’ broke in the boy, ‘to ’igh hinsults. Do you think that every gent what years a coat an’ pants with ’oles in ’em is a beggar?’

“For some moments master seemed to be struck speechless, an’ I feared that in spite of his well-known gentleness of character he’d throw the ink-stand at the boy’s head, but he didn’t; he merely said in a low voice, ‘I would dismiss you at once, boy, were it not that I have promised my daughter to offer you employment, and you can see by her looks how much your unnatural conduct grieves her.’

“An’ this was true, for poor Miss Di sat there with her hands clasped, her eyes full of tears, her eyebrows disappearin’ among her hair with astonishment, and her whole appearance the very pictur’ of distress. ‘However,’ continued Sir Richard, ‘I still make you the offer, though I doubt much whether you will be able to retain the situation. Your wages will—’

“‘Please sir,’ pleaded the boy, ‘don’t mention the wages. I couldn’t stand that. Indeed I couldn’t; it would really be too much for me.’

“‘Why, what do you mean?’ says master.

“‘I mean,’ says Impudence, ‘that I agree with you. I don’t think I could retain the sitivation, cause w’y? In the fust place, I ain’t got no talent at gardenin’. The on’y time I tried it was w’en I planted a toolip in a flower-pot, an’ w’en I dug it up to see ’ow it was a-gittin on a cove told me I’d planted it upside down. However, I wasn’t goin’ to be beat by that cove, so I say to ’im, Jack, I says, I planted it so a purpus, an’ w’en it sprouts I’m a-goin’ to ’ang it up to see if it won’t grow through the ’ole in the bottom. In the second place, I couldn’t retain the sitivation ’cause I don’t intend to take it, though you was to offer me six thousand no shillin’s an’ no pence no farthin’s a year as salary.’

“I r’ally did think master would ha’ dropt out of his chair at that. As for Miss Di, she was so tickled that she gave a sort of hysterical laugh.

“‘Balls,’ said master, ‘show him out, and—’ he pulled up short, but I knew he meant to say have an eye on the great-coats and umbrellas, so I showed the boy out, an’ he went down-stairs, quite quiet, but the last thing I saw of him was performin’ a sort of minstrel dance at the end of the street just before he turned the corner and disappeared.”

“Imp’rence!” exclaimed the cook.

“Naughty, ungrateful boy!” said Mrs Screwbury.

“But it was plucky of him,” said Jessie Summers.

“I would call it cheeky,” said Balls, “I can’t think what put it into his head to go on so.”

If Mr Balls had followed Bobby Frog in spirit, watched his subsequent movements, and listened to his remarks, perhaps he might have understood the meaning of his conduct a little better.

After he had turned the corner of the street, as above mentioned, Bobby trotted on for a short space, and then, coming to a full stop, executed a few steps of the minstrel dance, at the end of which he brought his foot down with tremendous emphasis on the pavement, and said—

“Yes, I’ve bin an’ done it. I know’d I was game for a good deal, but I did not think I was up to that. One never knows wot ’e’s fit for till ’e tries. Wot’ll Hetty think, I wonder?”

What Hetty thought he soon found out, for he overtook her on the Thames embankment on her way home. Bobby was fond of that route, though a little out of his way, because he loved the running water, though it was muddy, and the sight of steamers and barges.

“Well, Bobby,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder, “where have you been?”

“To see old Swallow’d-the-poker, Hetty.”

“What took you there?” asked the girl in surprise.

“My legs. You don’t suppose I’ve set up my carriage yet, do you?”

“Come, you know what I mean.”

“Vell, then, I went because I was sent for, an’ wot d’ye think? the old gen’l’man hoffered me the sitivation of under-gardener!”

“You don’t say so! Oh! Bobby, what a lucky boy—an’ what a kind gentleman! Tell me all about it now,” said Hetty, pressing her hand more tenderly on her brother’s shoulder. “What wages is he to give you?”

“No wages wotsomever.”

Hetty looked into her brother’s face with an expression of concerned surprise. She knew some tradespeople who made her work hard for so very little, that it was not difficult to believe in a gentleman asking her brother to work for nothin’! Still she had thought better of Sir Richard, and expected to hear something more creditable to him.

“Ah, you may look, but I do assure you he is to give me no wages, an’ I’m to do no work.”

Here Bobby executed a few steps of his favourite dance, but evidently from mere habit, and unconsciously, for he left off in the middle, and seemed to forget the salient point of emphasis with his foot.

“What do you mean, Bobby?—be earnest, like a dear boy, for once.”

“Earnest!” exclaimed the urchin with vehemence. “I never was more in earnest in my life. You should ’ave seen Swallow’d-the-poker w’en I refused to ’ave it.”

“Refused it?”

“Ay—refused it. Come Hetty, I’ll explain.”

The boy dropped his facetious tone and manner while he rapidly ran over the chief points of his interview with Sir Richard.

“But why did you refuse so good an offer?” asked Hetty, still unable to repress her surprise.

“Because of daddy.”

“Daddy?”

“Ay, daddy. You know he’s fond o’ me, is daddy, and, d’ye know, though p’r’aps you mayn’t believe it, I’m raither fond o’ him; but ’e’s a bad ’un, is daddy. He’s bent on mischief, you see, an’ ’e’s set his ’art on my ’elpin’ of ’im. But I wont ’elp ’im—that’s flat. Now, what d’ye think, Hetty,” (here he dropped his voice to almost a whisper and looked solemn), “dad wants to make use o’ me to commit a burglary on Swallow’d-the-poker’s ’ouse.”

“You don’t mean it, Bobby!”

“But I do, Hetty. Dad found out from that rediklous butler that goes veepin’ around our court like a leeky pump, that the old gen’l’man was goin’ to hoffer me this sitivation, an ’e’s bin wery ’ard on me to accept it, so that I may find out the ways o’ the ’ouse where the plate an’ waluables lay, let ’im in some fine dark night an’ ’elp ’im to carry off the swag.”

A distressed expression marked poor Hetty’s reception of this news, but she said never a word.

“Now you won’t tell, Hetty?” said the boy with a look of real anxiety on his face. “It’s not so much his killin’ me I cares about, but I wouldn’t bring daddy to grief for any money. I’d raither ’elp ’im than that. You’ll not say a word to nobody?”

“No, Bobby, I won’t say a word.”

“Vell, you see,” continued the boy, “ven I’d made myself so disagreeable that the old gen’l’man would ’ave nothin’ to do with me, I came straight away, an’ ’ere I am; but it was a trial, let me tell you, specially ven ’e come to mention wages—an sitch a ’eavenly smell o’ roasted wittles come up from the kitchen too at the moment, but I ’ad only to look at Miss Di, to make me as stubborn as a nox or a hass. ‘Wot!’ thinks I to myself, ‘betray that hangel—no, never!’ yet if I was to go into that ’ouse I know I’d do it, for daddy’s got sitch a wheedlin’ way with ’im w’en ’e likes, that I couldn’t ’old hout long—so I giv’ old Swallowed-the-poker sitch a lot o’ cheek that I thought ’e’d kick me right through the winder. He was considerable astonished as well as riled, I can tell you, an’ Miss Di’s face was a pictur’, but the old butler was the sight. He’d got ’is face screwed up into sitch a state o’ surprise that it looked like a eight-day clock with a gamboil. Now, Hetty, I’m goin’ to tell ’ee what’ll take your breath away. I’ve made up my mind to go to Canada!”

Hetty did, on hearing this, look as if her breath had been taken away. When it returned sufficiently she said:

“Bobby, what put that into your head?”

“The ’Ome of Hindustry,” said Bobby with a mysterious look.

“The Home of Industry,” repeated the girl in surprise, for she knew that Institution well, having frequently assisted its workers in their labour of love.

“Yes, that’s the name—’Ome of Hindustry, what sends off so many ragged boys to Canada under Miss Macpherson.”

“Ay, Bobby, it does a great deal more than that,” returned the girl. “Sending off poor boys and girls to Canada is only one branch of its work. If you’d bin to its tea-meetin’s for the destitute, as I have, an’ its clothin’ meetin’s and its mothers’ meetin’s, an—”

“’Ow d’ye know I ’aven’t bin at ’em all?” asked the boy with an impudent look.

“Well, you know, you couldn’t have been at the mothers’ meetings, Bobby.”

“Oh! for the matter o’ that, no more could you.”

“True, but I’ve heard of them all many and many a time; but come, tell me all about it. How did you come to go near the Home of Industry at all after refusing so often to go with me?”

“Vell, I didn’t go because of bein’ axed to go, you may be sure o’ that, but my little dosser, Tim Lumpy, you remember ’im? The cove wi’ the nose like a button, an’ no body to speak of—all legs an’ arms, like a ’uman win’-mill; vell, you must know they’ve nabbed ’im, an’ given ’im a rig-out o’ noo slops, an’ they’re goin’ to send ’im to Canada. So I ’appened to be down near the ’Ome one day three weeks past, an’ I see Lumpy a-goin’ in. ‘’Allo!’ says I. ‘’Allo!’ says ’e; an’ then ’e told me all about it. ‘Does they feed you well?’ I axed. ‘Oh! don’t they, just!’ said ’e. ‘There’s to be a blow hout this wery night,’ said ’e. ‘I wonder,’ says I, ‘if they’d let me in, for I’m uncommon ’ungry, I tell you; ’ad nuffin’ to heat since last night.’ Just as I said that, a lot o’ fellers like me came tumblin’ up to the door—so I sneaked in wi’ the rest—for I thought they’d kick me hout if they knowed I’d come without inwitation.”

“Well, and what then?” asked Hetty.

Here our little street-Arab began to tell, in his own peculiar language and style, how that he went in, and found a number of ladies in an upper room with forms set, and hot tea and bread to be had—as much as they could stuff—for nothing; that the boys were very wild and unruly at first, but that after the chief lady had prayed they became better, and that when half-a-dozen nice little girls were brought in and had sung a hymn or two they were quite quiet and ready to listen. Like many other people, this city Arab did not like to speak out freely, even to his sister, on matters that touched his feelings deeply, but he said enough to let the eager and thankful Hetty know that not only had Jesus and His love been preached to the boys, but she perceived that what had been said and sung had made an unusual impression, though the little ragged waif sought to conceal it under the veil of cool pleasantry, and she now recognised the fact that the prayers which she had been putting up for many a day in her brother’s behalf had been answered.

“Oh! I’m so happy,” she said; and, unable to restrain herself, flung her arms round Bobby’s neck and kissed him.

It was evident that the little fellow rather liked this, though he pretended that he did not.

“Come, old gal,” he said brusquely, “none o’ that sort o’ thing. I can’t stand it. Don’t you see, the popilation is lookin’ at us in surprise; besides, you’ve bin an’ crushed all my shirt front!”

“But,” continued Hetty, as they walked on again, “I’m not happy to hear that you are goin’ to Canada. What ever will I do without you, Bobby?”

Poor girl, she could well afford to do without him in one sense, for he had hitherto been chiefly an object of anxiety and expense to her, though also an object of love.

“I’m sorry to think of goin’ too, Hetty, for your sake an’ mother’s, but for daddy’s sake and my own I must go. You see, I can’t ’old hout agin ’im. W’en ’e makes up ’is mind to a thing you know ’e sticks to it, for ’e’s a tough un; an’ ’e’s got sitch a wheedlin’ sort o’ way with ’im that I can’t ’elp givin’ in a’most. So, you see, it’ll be better for both of us that I should go away. But I’ll come back, you know, Hetty, with a fortin—see if I don’t—an’ then, oh! won’t I keep a carridge an’ a ridin’ ’oss for daddy, an’ feed mother an’ you on plum-duff an’ pork sassengers to breakfast, dinner, an’ supper, with ice cream for a relish!”

Poor Hetty did not even smile at this prospect of temporal felicity. She felt that in the main the boy was right, and that the only chance he had of escaping the toils in which her father was wrapping him by the strange union of affection and villainy, was to leave the country. She knew, also, that, thanks to the Home of Industry and its promoters, the sending of a ragged, friendless, penniless London waif, clothed and in his right mind, to a new land of bright and hopeful prospects, was an event brought within the bounds of possibility.

That night Bob Frog stood with his dosser, (i.e. his friend), Tim Lumpy, discussing their future prospects in the partial privacy of a railway-arch. They talked long, and, for waifs, earnestly—both as to the land they were about to quit and that to which they were going; and the surprising fact might have been noted by a listener—had there been any such present, save a homeless cat—that neither of the boys perpetrated a joke for the space of at least ten minutes.

“Vy,” observed little Frog at length, “you seem to ’ave got all the fun drove out o’ you, Lumpy.”

“Not a bit on it,” returned the other, with a hurt look, as though he had been charged with some serious misdemeanour, “but it do seem sitch a shabby thing to go an’ forsake my blind old mother.”

“But yer blind old mother wants you to go,” said Bobby, “an’ says she’ll be well looked arter by the ladies of the ’Ome, and that she wouldn’t stand in the way o’ your prospec’s. Besides, she ain’t yer mother!”

This was true. Tim Lumpy had neither father nor mother, nor relative on earth, and the old woman who, out of sheer pity, had taken him in and allowed him to call her “mother,” was a widow at the lowest possible round of that social ladder, at the top of which—figuratively speaking—sits Her Gracious Majesty the Queen. Mrs Lumpy had found him on her door-step, weeping and in rags, at the early age of five years. She had taken him in, and fed him on part of a penny loaf which formed the sole edible substance for her own breakfast. She had mended his rags to the extent of her ability, but she had not washed his face, having no soap of her own, and not caring to borrow from neighbours who were in the same destitute condition. Besides, she had too hard a battle to fight with an ever-present and pressing foe, to care much about dirt, and no doubt deemed a wash of tears now and then sufficient. Lumpy himself seemed to agree with her as to this, for he washed himself in that fashion frequently.

Having sought for his parents in vain, with the aid of the police, Mrs Lumpy quietly kept the boy on; gave him her surname, prefixed that of Timothy, answered to the call of mother, and then left him to do very much as he pleased.

In these circumstances, it was not surprising that little Tim soon grew to be one of the pests of his alley. Tim was a weak-eyed boy, and remarkably thin, being, as his friend had said, composed chiefly of legs and arms. There must have been a good deal of brain also, for he was keen-witted, as people soon began to find out to their cost. Tim was observant also. He observed, on nearing the age of ten years, that in the great river of life which daily flowed past him, there were certain faces which indicated tender and kindly hearts, coupled with defective brain-action, and a good deal of self-will. He became painfully shrewd in reading such faces, and, on wet days, would present himself to them with his bare little red feet and half-naked body, rain water, (doing duty for tears), running from his weak bloodshot eyes, and falsehoods of the most pitiable, complex, and impudent character pouring from his thin blue lips, whilst awful solemnity seemed to shine on his visage. The certain result was—coppers!

These kindly ones have, unwittingly of course, changed a text of Scripture, and, for the words “consider the poor,” read “throw coppers to the poor!” You see, it is much easier to relieve one’s feelings by giving away a few pence, than to take the trouble of visiting, inquiring about, and otherwise considering, the poor! At all events it would seem so, for Tim began to grow comparatively rich, and corrupted, still more deeply, associates who were already buried sufficiently in the depths of corruption.

At last little Tim was met by a lady who had befriended him more than once, and who asked him why he preferred begging in the streets to going to the ragged school, where he would get not only food for the body, but for the soul. He replied that he was hungry, and his mother had no victuals to give him, so he had gone out to beg. The lady went straight to Mrs Lumpy, found the story to be true, and that the poor half-blind old woman was quite unable to support the boy and herself. The lady prevailed on the old woman to attend the meetings for poor, aged, and infirm women in Miss Macpherson’s “Beehive,” and little Tim was taken into the “Home for Destitute Little Boys under ten years of age.”

It was not all smooth sailing in that Home after Tim Lumpy entered it! Being utterly untamed, Tim had many a sore struggle ere the temper was brought under control. One day he was so bad that the governess was obliged to punish him by leaving him behind, while the other boys went out for a walk. When left alone, the lady-superintendent tried to converse with him about obedience, but he became frightfully violent, and demanded his rags that he might return again to the streets. Finally he escaped, rushed to his old home in a paroxysm of rage, and then, getting on the roof, declared to the assembled neighbours that he would throw himself down and dash out his brains. In this state a Bible-woman found him. After offering the mental prayer, “Lord, help me,” she entreated him to come down and join her in a cup of tea with his old mother. The invitation perhaps struck the little rebel as having a touch of humour in it. At all events he accepted it and forthwith descended.

Over the tea, the Bible-woman prayed aloud for him, and the poor boy broke down, burst into tears, and begged forgiveness. Soon afterwards he was heard tapping at the door of the Home—gentle and subdued.

Thus was this waif rescued, and he now discussed with his former comrade the prospect of transferring themselves and their powers, mental and physical, to Canada. Diverging from this subject to Bobby’s father, and his dark designs, Tim asked if Ned Frog had absolutely decided to break into Sir Richard Brandon’s house, and Bobby replied that he had; that his father had wormed out of the butler, who was a soft stupid sort of cove, where the plate and valuables were kept, and that he and another man had arranged to do it.

“Is the partikler night fixed?” asked Tim.

“Yes; it’s to be the last night o’ this month.”

“Why not give notice?” asked Tim.

“’Cause I won’t peach on daddy,” said Bob Frog stoutly.

Little Tim received this with a “quite right, old dosser,” and then proposed that the meeting should adjourn, as he was expected back at the Home by that time.

Two weeks or so after that, Police-Constable Number 666 was walking quietly along one of the streets of his particular beat in the West-end, with that stateliness of step which seems to be inseparable from place, power, and six feet two.

It was a quiet street, such as Wealth loves to inhabit. There were few carriages passing along it, and fewer passengers. Number 666 had nothing particular to do—the inhabitants being painfully well-behaved, and the sun high. His mind, therefore, roamed about aimlessly, sometimes bringing playfully before him a small abode, not very far distant, where a pretty woman was busy with household operations, and a ferocious policeman, about three feet high, was taking into custody an incorrigible criminal of still smaller size.

A little boy, with very long arms and legs, might have been seen following our friend Giles Scott, until the latter entered upon one of those narrow paths made by builders on the pavements of streets when houses are undergoing repairs. Watching until Giles was half way along it, the boy ran nimbly up and accosted him with a familiar—

“Well, old man, ’ow are you?”

“Pretty bobbish, thank you,” returned the constable, for he was a good-natured man, and rather liked a little quiet chaff with street-boys when not too much engaged with duty.

“Well, now, are you aweer that there’s a-goin’ to be a burglairy committed in this ’ere quarter?” asked the boy, thrusting both hands deep into his pockets, and bending his body a little back, so as to look more easily up at his tall friend.

“Ah! indeed, well no, I didn’t know it, for I forgot to examine the books at Scotland Yard this morning, but I’ve no doubt it’s entered there by your friend who’s goin’ to commit it.”

“No, it ain’t entered there,” said the boy, with a manner and tone that rather surprised Number 666; “and I’d advise you to git out your note-book, an’ clap down wot I’m a-goin’ to tell ye. You know the ’ouse of Sir Richard Brandon?”

“Yes, I know it.”

“Well, that ’ouse is to be cracked on the 31st night o’ this month.”

“How d’you know that, lad?” asked Giles, moving towards the end of the barricade, so as to get nearer to his informant.

“No use, bobby,” said Tim, “big as you are, you can’t nab me. Believe me or not as you like, but I advise you to look arter that there ’ouse on the 31st if you valley your repitation.”

Tim went off like a congreve rocket, dashed down a side street, sloped into an alley, and melted into a wilderness of bricks and mortar.

Of course Giles did not attempt to follow, but some mysterious communications passed between him and his superintendent that night before he went to bed.

Chapter Eleven.

Sir Richard and Mr Brisbane discuss, and Di listens.

“My dear sir,” said Sir Richard Brandon, over a glass of sherry one evening after dinner, to George Brisbane, Esquire of Lively Hall, “the management of the poor is a difficult, a very difficult subject to deal with.”

“It is, unquestionably,” assented Brisbane, “so difficult, that I am afraid some of our legislators are unwilling to face it; but it ought to be faced, for there is much to be done in the way of improving the poor-laws, which at present tend to foster pauperism in the young, and bear heavily on the aged. Meanwhile, philanthropists find it necessary to take up the case of the poor as a private enterprise.”

“Pardon me, Brisbane, there I think you are in error. Everything requisite to afford relief to the poor is provided by the state. If the poor will not take advantage of the provision, or the machinery is not well oiled and worked by the officials, the remedy lies in greater wisdom on the part of the poor, and supervision of officials—not in further legislation. But what do you mean by our poor-laws bearing heavily on the aged?”

“I mean that the old people should be better cared for, simply because of their age. Great age is a sufficient argument of itself, I think, for throwing a veil of oblivion over the past, and extending charity with a liberal, pitying hand, because of present distress, and irremediable infirmities. Whatever may be the truth with regard to paupers and workhouses in general, there ought to be a distinct refuge for the aged, which should be attractive—not repulsive, as at present—and age, without reference to character or antecedents, should constitute the title to enter it. ‘God pity the aged poor,’ is often my prayer, ‘and enable us to feel more for them in the dreary, pitiful termination of their career.’”

“But, my dear sir,” returned Sir Richard, “you would have old paupers crowding into such workhouses, or refuges as you call them, by the thousand.”

“Well, better that they should do so than that they should die miserably by thousands in filthy and empty rooms—sometimes without fire, or food, or physic, or a single word of kindness to ease their sad descent into the grave.”

“But, then, Brisbane, as I said, it is their own fault—they have the workhouse to go to.”

“But, then, as I said, Sir Richard, the workhouse is rendered so repulsive to them that they keep out of it as long as they can, and too often keep out so long that it is too late, and their end is as I have described. However, until things are better arranged, we must do what we can for them in a private way. Indeed Scripture teaches distinctly the necessity for private charity, by such words as— ‘the poor ye have always with you,’ and, ‘blessed are they who consider the poor.’ Don’t you agree with me, Mr Welland?”

Stephen Welland—who, since the day of his accident, had become intimate with Mr Brisbane and Sir Richard—replied that although deeply interested in the discussion going on, his knowledge of the subject was too slight to justify his holding any decided opinion.

“Take another glass of sherry,” said Sir Richard, pushing the decanter towards the young man; “it will stir your brain and enable you to see your way more clearly through this knotty point.”

“No more, thank you, Sir Richard.”

“Come, come—fill your glass,” said the knight; “you and I must set an example of moderate drinking to Brisbane, as a counter-blast to his Blue-Ribbonism.”

Welland smiled and re-filled his glass.

“Nay, I never thrust my opinions on that point on people,” said Brisbane, with a laugh, “but if you will draw the sword and challenge me, I won’t refuse the combat!”

“No, no, Brisbane. Please spare us! I re-sheath the sword, and need not that you should go all over it again. I quite understand that you are no bigot, that you think the Bible clearly permits and encourages total abstinence in certain circumstances, though it does not teach it; that, although a total abstainer yourself, you do not refuse to give drink to your friends if they desire it—and all that sort of thing; but pray let it pass, and I won’t offend again.”

“Ah, Sir Richard, you are an unfair foe. You draw your sword to give me a wound through our young friend, and then sheath it before I can return on you. However, you have stated my position so well that I forgive you and shake hands. But, to return to the matter of private charity, are you aware how little suffices to support the poor—how very far the mere crumbs that fall from a rich man’s table will go to sustain them I Now, just take the glass of wine which Welland has swallowed—against his expressed wish, observe, and merely to oblige you, Sir Richard. Its value is, say, sixpence. Excuse me, I do not of course refer to its real value, but to its recognised restaurant-value! Well, I happened the other day to be at a meeting of old women at the ‘Beehive’ in Spitalfields; there were some eighty or a hundred of them. With dim eyes and trembling fingers they were sewing garments for the boys who are to be sent out to Canada. Such feeble workers could not find employment elsewhere, but by liberal hearts a plan has been devised whereby many an aged one, past work, can earn a few pence. Twopence an hour is the pay. They are in the habit of meeting once a week for three hours, and thus earn sixpence. Many of these women, I may remark, are true Christians. I wondered how far such a sum would go, and how the poor old things spent it. One woman sixty-three years of age enlightened me. She was a feeble old creature, suffering from chronic rheumatism and a dislocated hip. When I questioned her she said—‘I have difficulties indeed, but I tell my Father all. Sometimes, when I’m very hungry and have nothing to eat, I tell Him, and I know He hears me, for He takes the feeling away, and it only leaves me a little faint.’

“‘But how do you spend the sixpence that you earn here?’ I asked.

“‘Well, sir,’ she said, ‘sometimes, when very hard-up, I spend part of it this way:— I buy a hap’orth o’ tea, a hap’orth o’ sugar, a hap’orth o’ drippin’, a hap’orth o’ wood and a penn’orth o’ bread. Sometimes when better off than usual I get a heap of coals at a time, perhaps quarter of a hundredweight, because I save a farthing by getting the whole quarter, an’ that lasts me a long time, and wi’ the farthing I mayhap treat myself to a drop o’ milk. Sometimes, too, I buy my penn’orth o’ wood from the coopers and chop it myself, for I can make it go further that way.’

“So, you see, Welland,” continued Brisbane, “your glass of sherry would have gone a long way in the domestic calculations of a poor old woman, who very likely once had sons who were as fond of her and as proud of her, as you now are of your own mother.”

“It is very sad that any class of human beings should be reduced to so low an ebb,” returned the young man seriously.

“Yes, and it is very difficult,” said Sir Richard, “to reduce one’s mental action so as to fully understand the exact bearing of such minute monetary arrangements, especially for one who is accustomed to regard the subject of finance from a different standpoint.”

“But the saddest thing of all to me, and the most difficult to understand,” resumed Brisbane, “is the state of mind and feeling of those professing Christians, who, with ample means, give exceedingly little towards the alleviation of such distress, take little or no interest in the condition of the poor, and allow as much waste in their establishments as would, if turned to account, become streamlets of absolute wealth to many of the destitute.”

This latter remark was a thrust which told pretty severely on the host—all the more so, perhaps, that he knew Brisbane did not intend it as a thrust at all, for he was utterly ignorant of the fact that his friend seldom gave anything away in charity, and even found it difficult to pay his way and make the two ends meet with his poor little five thousand a year—for, you see, if a man has to keep up a fairly large establishment, with a town and country house, and have his yacht, and a good stable, and indulge in betting, and give frequent dinners, and take shootings in Scotland, and amuse himself with jewellery, etcetera, why, he must pay for it, you know!

“The greatest trouble of these poor women, I found,” continued Brisbane, “is their rent, which varies from 2 shillings to 3 shillings a week for their little rooms, and it is a constant struggle with them to keep out of ‘the House,’ so greatly dreaded by the respectable poor. One of them told me she had lately saved up a shilling with which she bought a pair of ‘specs,’ and was greatly comforted thereby, for they helped her fading eyesight. I thought at the time what a deal of good might be done and comfort given if people whose sight is changing would send their disused spectacles to the home of Industry in Commercial Street, Spitalfields, for the poor. By the way, your sight must have changed more than once, Sir Richard! Have you not a pair or two of disused spectacles to spare?”

“Well, yes, I have a pair or two, but they have gold rims, which would be rather incongruous on the noses of poor people, don’t you think?”

“Oh! by no means. We could manage to convert the rims into blue steel, and leave something over for sugar and tea.”

“Well, I’ll send them,” said Sir Richard with a laugh. “By the way, you mentioned a plan whereby those poor women were enabled to do useful work, although too old for much. What plan might that be?”

“It is a very simple plan,” answered Brisbane, “and consists chiefly in the work being apportioned according to ability. Worn garments and odds and ends of stuff are sent to the Beehive from all parts of the country by sympathising friends. These are heaped together in one corner of the room where the poor old things work. Down before this mass of stuff are set certain of the company who have large constructive powers. These skilfully contrive, cut out, alter, and piece together all kinds of clothing, including the house slippers and Glengarry caps worn by the little rescued boys. Even handkerchiefs and babies’ long frocks are conjured out of a petticoat or muslin lining! The work, thus selected and arranged, is put into the hands of those who, though not skilful in originating, have the plodding patience to carry out the designs of the more ingenious, and so garments are produced to cover the shivering limbs of any destitute child that may enter the Refuge as well as to complete the outfits of the little emigrants.”

“Well, Brisbane, I freely confess,” said Sir Richard, “that you have roused a degree of interest in poor old women which I never felt before, and it does seem to me that we might do a good deal more for them with our mere superfluities and cast-off clothing. Do the old women receive any food on these working nights besides the pence they earn?”

“No, I am sorry to say they do not—at least not usually. You see it takes a hundred or more sixpences every Monday merely to keep that sewing-class going, and more than once there has been a talk of closing it for want of funds, but the poor creatures have pleaded so pitifully that they might still be allowed to attend, even though they should work at half-price, that it has been hitherto continued. You see it is a matter of no small moment for those women merely to spend three hours in a room with a good fire, besides which they delight in the hymns and prayers and the loving counsel and comfort they receive. It enables them to go out into the cold, even though hungry, with more heart and trust in God as they limp slowly back again to their fireless grates and bare cupboards.

“The day on which I visited the place I could not bear the thought of this, so I gave a sovereign to let them have a good meal. This sufficed. Large kettles are always kept in readiness for such occasions. These were put on immediately by the matron. The elder girls in training on the floor above set to work to cut thick slices of bread and butter, the tea urns were soon brought down, and in twenty minutes I had the satisfaction of seeing the whole hundred eating heartily and enjoying a hot meal. My own soul was fed, too—for the words came to me, ‘I was an hungered and ye gave me meat,’ and one old woman, sitting near me, said, ‘I have a long walk home, and have been casting over in my mind all the afternoon whether I could spare a penny for a cup of tea on the way. How good the Lord is to send this!’”

With large, round, glittering eyes and parted lips, and heightened colour and varying expression, sat little Di Brandon at her father’s elbow, almost motionless, her little hands clasped tight, and uttering never a word, but gazing intently at the speakers and drinking it all in, while sorrow, surprise, sympathy, indignation, and intense pity stirred her little heart to its very centre.

In the nursery she retailed it all over, with an eager face and rapid commentary, to the sympathetic Mrs Screwbury, and finally, in bed, presided over millions of old women who made up mountains of old garments, devoured fields of buttered bread, and drank oceans of steaming tea!

Chapter Twelve.

Sammy Twitter’s Fall.

We must turn now to Samuel Twitter, senior. That genial old man was busy one morning in the nursery, amusing little Mita, who had by that time attained to what we may style the dawn-of-intelligence period of life, and was what Mrs Loper, Mr Crackaby, and Mr Stickler called “engaging.”

“Mariar!” shouted Mr Twitter to his amiable spouse, who was finishing her toilet in the adjoining room. “She’s makin’ faces at me—yes, she’s actually attempting to laugh!”

“The darling!” came from the next room, in emphatic tones.

“Mariar!”

“Well, dear.”

“Is Sammy down in the parlour?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because he’s not in his room—tumti-iddidy-too-too—you charming thing!”

It must be understood that the latter part of this sentence had reference to the baby, not to Mrs Twitter.

Having expended his affections and all his spare time on Mita,—who, to do her justice, made faces enough at him to repay his attentions in full,—Mr Twitter descended to the breakfast parlour and asked the domestic if she had seen Sammy yet.

“No, sir, I hain’t.”

“Are you sure he’s not in his room?”

“Well, no, sir, but I knocked twice and got no answer.”

“Very odd; Sammy didn’t use to be late, nor to sleep so soundly,” said Mr Twitter, ascending to the attic of his eldest son.

Obtaining no reply to his knock, he opened the door and found that the room was empty. More than that, he discovered, to his surprise and alarm, that Sammy’s bed was unruffled, so that Sammy himself must have slept elsewhere!

In silent consternation the father descended to his bedroom and said, “Mariar, Sammy’s gone!”

“Dead!” exclaimed Mrs Twitter with a look of horror.

“No, no; not dead, but gone—gone out of the house. Did not sleep in it last night, apparently.”

Poor Mrs Twitter sank into a chair and gazed at her husband with a stricken face.

Up to that date the family had prospered steadily, and, may we not add, deservedly; their children having been trained in the knowledge of God, their duties having been conscientiously discharged, their sympathies with suffering humanity encouraged, and their general principles carried into practical effect. The consequence was that they were a well-ordered and loving family. There are many such in our land—families which are guided by the Spirit and the Word of God. The sudden disappearance, therefore, of the eldest son of the Twitter family was not an event to be taken lightly for he had never slept out of his own particular bed without the distinct knowledge of his father and mother since he was born, and his appearance at the breakfast-table had been hitherto as certain as the rising of the sun or the winding of the eight-day clock by his father every Saturday night.

In addition to all this, Sammy was of an amiable disposition, and had been trustworthy, so that when he came to the years of discretion—which his father had fixed at fifteen—he was allowed a latch-key, as he had frequently to work at his employer’s books till a lateish hour,—sometimes eleven o’clock—after the family, including the domestic, had gone to rest.

“Now, Samuel,” said Mrs Twitter, with a slight return of her wonted energy, “there can be only two explanations of this. Either the dear boy has met with an accident, or—”

“Well, Mariar, why do you pause?”

“Because it seems so absurd to think of, much more to talk of, his going wrong or running away! The first thing I’ve got to do, Samuel, is to go to the police-office, report the case, and hear what they have to advise.”

“The very thing I was thinking of, Mariar; but don’t it strike you it might be better that I should go to the station?”

“No, Samuel, the station is near. I can do that, while you take a cab, go straight away to his office and find out at what hour he left. Now, go; we have not a moment to lose. Mary,” (this was the next in order to Sammy), “will look after the children’s breakfast. Make haste!”

Mr Twitter made haste—made it so fast that he made too much of it, over-shot the mark, and went down-stairs head foremost, saluting the front door with a rap that threw that of the postman entirely into the shade. But Twitter was a springy as well as an athletic man. He arose undamaged, made no remark to his more than astonished children, and went his way.

Mrs Twitter immediately followed her husband’s example in a less violent and eccentric manner. The superintendent of police received her with that affable display of grave good-will which is a characteristic of the force. He listened with patient attention to the rather incoherent tale which she told with much agitation—unbosoming herself to this officer to a quite unnecessary extent as to private feelings and opinions, and, somehow, feeling as if he were a trusted and confidential friend though he was an absolute stranger—such is the wonderful influence of Power in self-possessed repose, over Weakness in distressful uncertainty!

Having heard all that the good lady had to say, with scarcely a word of interruption; having put a few pertinent and relevant questions and noted the replies, the superintendent advised Mrs Twitter to calm herself, for that it would soon be “all right;” to return home, and abide the issue of his exertions; to make herself as easy in the circumstances as possible, and, finally, sent her away with the first ray of comfort that had entered her heart since the news of Sammy’s disappearance had burst upon her like a thunderclap.

“What a thing it is,” she muttered to herself on her way home, “to put things into the hands of a man—one you can feel sure will do everything sensibly and well, and without fuss.” The good lady meant no disparagement to her sex by this—far from it; she referred to a manly man as compared with an unmanly one, and she thought, for one moment, rather disparagingly about the salute which her Samuel’s bald pate had given to the door that morning. Probably she failed to think of the fussy manner in which she herself had assaulted the superintendent of police, for it is said that people seldom see themselves!

But Mrs Twitter was by no means bitter in her thoughts, and her conscience twitted her a little for having perhaps done Samuel a slight injustice.

Indeed she had done him injustice, for that estimable little man went about his inquiries after the lost Sammy with a lump as big as a walnut on the top of his head, and with a degree of persistent energy that might have made the superintendent himself envious.

“Not been at the office for two days, sir!” exclaimed Mr Twitter, repeating—in surprised indignation, for he could not believe it—the words of Sammy’s employer, who was a merchant in the hardware line.

“No, sir,” said the hardware man, whose face seemed as hard as his ware.

“Do—you—mean—to—tell—me,” said Twitter, with deliberate solemnity, “that my son Samuel has not been in this office for two days?”

“That is precisely what I mean to tell you,” returned the hardware man, “and I mean to tell you, moreover, that your son has been very irregular of late in his attendance, and that on more than one occasion he has come here drunk.”

“Drunk!” repeated Twitter, almost in a shout.

“Yes, sir, drunk—intoxicated.”

The hardware man seemed at that moment to Mr Twitter the hardest-ware man that ever confronted him. He stood for some moments aghast and speechless.

“Are you aware, sir,” he said at last, in impressive tones, “that my son Samuel wears the blue ribbon?”

The hardware man inquired, with an expression of affected surprise, what that had to do with the question; and further, gave it as his opinion that a bit of blue ribbon was no better than a bit of red or green ribbon if it had not something better behind it.

This latter remark, although by no means meant to soothe, had the effect of reducing Mr Twitter to a condition of sudden humility.

“There, sir,” said he, “I entirely agree with you, but I had believed—indeed it seems to me almost impossible to believe otherwise—that my poor boy had religious principle behind his blue ribbon.”

This was said in such a meek tone, and with such a woe-begone look as the conviction began to dawn that Sammy was not immaculate—that the hardware man began visibly to soften, and at last a confidential talk was established, in which was revealed such a series of irregularities on the part of the erring son, that the poor father’s heart was crushed for the time, and, as it were, trodden in the dust. In his extremity, he looked up to God and found relief in rolling his care upon Him.

As he slowly recovered from the shock, Twitter’s brain resumed its wonted activity.

“You have a number of clerks, I believe?” he suddenly asked the hardware man.

“Yes, I have—four of them.”

“Would you object to taking me through your warehouse, as if to show it to me, and allow me to look at your clerks?”

“Certainly not. Come along.”

On entering, they found one tying up a parcel, one writing busily, one reading a book, and one balancing a ruler on his nose. The latter, on being thus caught in the act, gave a short laugh, returned the ruler to its place, and quietly went on with his work. The reader of the book started, endeavoured to conceal the volume, in which effort he was unsuccessful, and became very red in the face as he resumed his pen.

The employer took no notice, and Mr Twitter looked very hard at the hardware in the distant end of the warehouse, just over the desk at which the clerks sat. He made a few undertoned remarks to the master, and then, crossing over to the desk, said:—

“Mr Dobbs, may I have the pleasure of a few minutes’ conversation with you outside?”

“C–certainly, sir,” replied Dobbs, rising with a redder face than ever, and putting on his hat.

“Will you be so good as to tell me, Mr Dobbs,” said Twitter, in a quiet but very decided way when outside, “where my son Samuel Twitter spent last night?”

Twitter looked steadily in the clerk’s eyes as he put this question. He was making a bold stroke for success as an amateur detective, and, as is frequently the result of bold strokes, he succeeded.

“Eh! your—your—son S–Samuel,” stammered Dobbs, looking at Twitter’s breast-pin, and then at the ground, while varying expressions of guilty shame and defiance flitted across his face.

He had a heavy, somewhat sulky face, with indecision of character stamped on it. Mr Twitter saw that and took advantage of the latter quality.

“My poor boy,” he said, “don’t attempt to deceive me. You are guilty, and you know it. Stay, don’t speak yet. I have no wish to injure you. On the contrary, I pray God to bless and save you; but what I want with you at this moment is to learn where my dear boy is. If you tell me, no further notice shall be taken of this matter, I assure you.”

“Does—does—he know anything about this?” asked Dobbs, glancing in the direction of the warehouse of the hardware man.

“No, nothing of your having led Sammy astray, if that’s what you mean,—at least, not from me, and you may depend on it he shall hear nothing, if you only confide in me. Of course he may have his suspicions.”

“Well, sir,” said Dobbs, with a sigh of relief, “he’s in my lodgings.”

Having ascertained the address of the lodgings, the poor father called a cab and soon stood by the side of a bed on which his son Sammy lay sprawling in the helpless attitude in which he had fallen down the night before, after a season of drunken riot. He was in a heavy sleep, with his still innocent-looking features tinged with the first blight of dissipation.

“Sammy,” said the father, in a husky voice, as he shook him gently by the arm; but the poor boy made no answer—even a roughish shake failed to draw from him more than the grumbled desire, “let me alone.”

“Oh! God spare and save him!” murmured the father, in a still husky voice, as he fell on his knees by the bedside and prayed—prayed as though his heart were breaking, while the object of his prayer lay apparently unconscious through it all.

He rose, and was standing by the bedside, uncertain how to act, when a heavy tread was heard on the landing, the door was thrown open, and the landlady, announcing “a gentleman, sir,” ushered in the superintendent of police, who looked at Mr Twitter with a slight expression of surprise.

“You are here before me, I see, sir,” he said.

“Yes, but how did you come to find out that he was here?”

“Well, I had not much difficulty. You see it is part of our duty to keep our eyes open,” replied the superintendent, with a peculiar smile, “and I have on several occasions observed your son entering this house with a companion in a condition which did not quite harmonise with his blue ribbon, so, after your good lady explained the matter to me this morning I came straight here.”

“Thank you—thank you. It is very kind. I—you—it could not have been better managed.”

Mr Twitter stopped and looked helplessly at the figure on the bed.

“Perhaps,” said the superintendent, with much delicacy of feeling, “you would prefer to be alone with your boy when he awakes. If I can be of any further use to you, you know where to find me. Good-day, sir.”

Without waiting for a reply the considerate superintendent left the room.

“Oh! Sammy, Sammy, speak to me, my dear boy—speak to your old father!” he cried, turning again to the bed and kneeling beside it; but the drunken sleeper did not move.

Rising hastily he went to the door and called the landlady.

“I’ll go home, missis,” he said, “and send the poor lad’s mother to him.”

“Very well, sir, I’ll look well after ’im till she comes.”

Twitter was gone in a moment, and the old landlady returned to her lodger’s room. There, to her surprise, she found Sammy up and hastily pulling on his boots.

In truth he had been only shamming sleep, and, although still very drunk, was quite capable of looking after himself. He had indeed been asleep when his father’s entrance awoke him, but a feeling of intense shame had induced him to remain quite still, and then, having commenced with this unspoken lie, he felt constrained to carry it out. But the thought of facing his mother he could not bear, for the boy had a sensitive spirit and was keenly alive to the terrible fall he had made. At the same time he was too cowardly to face the consequences. Dressing himself as well as he could, he rushed from the house in spite of the earnest entreaties of the old landlady, so that when the distracted mother came to embrace and forgive her erring child she found that he had fled.

Plunging into the crowded thoroughfares of the great city, and walking swiftly along without aim or desire, eaten up with shame, and rendered desperate by remorse, the now reckless youth sought refuge in a low grog-shop, and called for a glass of beer.

“Well, I say, you’re com—comin’ it raither strong, ain’t you, young feller?” said a voice at his elbow.

He looked up hastily, and saw a blear-eyed youth in a state of drivelling intoxication, staring at him with the expression of an idiot.

“That’s no business of yours,” replied Sam Twitter, sharply.

“Well, thash true, ’tain’t no b–busnish o’ mine. I—I’m pretty far gone m’self, I allow; but I ain’t quite got the l–length o’ drinkin’ in a p–public ’ouse wi’ th’ bl–blue ribb’n on.”

The fallen lad glanced at his breast. There it was,—forgotten, desecrated! He tore it fiercely from his button-hole, amid the laughter of the bystanders—most of whom were women of the lowest grade—and dashed it on the floor.

“Thash right.—You’re a berrer feller than I took you for,” said the sot at his elbow.

To avoid further attention Sammy took his beer into a dark corner and was quickly forgotten.

He had not been seated more than a few minutes when the door opened, and a man with a mild, gentle, yet manly face entered.

“Have a glass, ol’ feller?” said the sot, the instant he caught sight of him.

“Thank you, no—not to-day,” replied John Seaward, for it was our city missionary on what he sometimes called a fishing excursion—fishing for men! “I have come to give you a glass to-day, friends.”

“Well, that’s friendly,” said a gruff voice in a secluded box, out of which next minute staggered Ned Frog. “Come, what is’t to be, old man?”

“A looking-glass,” replied the missionary, picking out a tract from the bundle he held in his hand and offering it to the ex-prize-fighter. “But the tract is not the glass I speak of, friend: here it is, in the Word of that God who made us all—made the throats that swallow the drink, and the brains that reel under it.”

Here he read from a small Bible, “‘But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way.’”

“Bah!” said Ned, flinging the tract on the floor and exclaiming as he left the place with a swing; “I don’t drink wine, old man; can’t afford anything better than beer, though sometimes, when I’m in luck, I have a drop of Old Tom.”

There was a great burst of ribald laughter at this, and numerous were the witticisms perpetrated at the expense of the missionary, but he took no notice of these for a time, occupying himself merely in turning over the leaves of his Bible. When there was a lull he said:—

“Now, dear sisters,” (turning to the women who, with a more or less drunken aspect and slatternly air, were staring at him), “for sisters of mine you are, having been made by the same Heavenly Father; I won’t offer you another glass,—not even a looking-glass,—for the one I have already held up to you will do, if God’s Holy Spirit opens your eyes to see yourselves in it; but I’ll give you a better object to look at. It is a Saviour—one who is able to save you from the drink, and from sin in every form. You know His name well, most of you; it is Jesus, and that name means Saviour, for He came to save His people from their sins.”

At this point he was interrupted by one of the women, who seemed bent on keeping up the spirit of banter with which they had begun. She asked him with a leer if he had got a wife.

“No,” he said, “but I have got a great respect and love for women, because I’ve got a mother, and if ever there was a woman on the face of this earth that deserves the love of a son, that woman is my mother. Sister,” he added, turning to one of those who sat on a bench near him with a thin, puny, curly-haired boy wrapped up in her ragged shawl, “the best prayer that I could offer up for you—and I do offer it—is, that the little chap in your arms may grow up to bless his mother as heartily as I bless mine, but that can never be, so long as you love the strong drink and refuse the Saviour.”

At that moment a loud cry was heard outside. They all rose and ran to the door, where a woman, in the lowest depths of depravity, with her eyes bloodshot, her hair tumbling about her half-naked shoulders, and her ragged garments draggled and wet, had fallen in her efforts to enter the public-house to obtain more of the poison which had already almost destroyed her. She had cut her forehead, and the blood flowed freely over her face as the missionary lifted her. He was a powerful man, and could take her up tenderly and with ease. She was not much hurt, however. After Seaward had bandaged the cut with his own handkerchief she professed to be much better.

This little incident completed the good influence which the missionary’s words and manner had previously commenced. Most of the women began to weep as they listened to the words of love, encouragement, and hope addressed to them. A few of course remained obdurate, though not unimpressed.

All this time young Sam Twitter remained in his dark corner, with his head resting on his arms to prevent his being recognised. Well did he know John Seaward, and well did Seaward know him, for the missionary had long been a fellow-worker with Mrs Twitter in George Yard and at the Home of Industry. The boy was very anxious to escape Seaward’s observation. This was not a difficult matter. When the missionary left, after distributing his tracts, Sammy rose up and sought to hide himself—from himself, had that been possible—in the lowest slums of London.

Chapter Thirteen.

Tells of some Curious and Vigorous Peculiarities of the Lower Orders.

Now it must not be supposed that Mrs Frog, having provided for her baby and got rid of it, remained thereafter quite indifferent to it. On the contrary, she felt the blank more than she had expected, and her motherly heart began to yearn for it powerfully.

To gratify this yearning to some extent, she got into the habit of paying frequent visits, sometimes by night and sometimes by day, to the street in which Samuel Twitter lived, and tried to see her baby through the stone walls of the house! Her eyes being weak, as well as her imagination, she failed in this effort, but the mere sight of the house where little Matty was, sufficed to calm her maternal yearnings in some slight degree.

By the way, that name reminds us of our having omitted to mention that baby Frog’s real name was Matilda, and her pet name Matty, so that the name of Mita, fixed on by the Twitters, was not so wide of the mark as it might have been.

One night Mrs Frog, feeling the yearning strong upon her, put on her bonnet and shawl—that is to say, the bundle of dirty silk, pasteboard, and flowers which represented the one, and the soiled tartan rag that did duty for the other.

“Where are ye off to, old woman?” asked Ned, who, having been recently successful in some little “job,” was in high good humour.

“I’m goin’ round to see Mrs Tibbs, Ned. D’you want me?”

“No, on’y I’m goin’ that way too, so we’ll walk together.”

Mrs Frog, we regret to say, was not particular as to the matter of truth. She had no intention of going near Mrs Tibbs, but, having committed herself, made a virtue of necessity, and resolved to pay that lady a visit.

The conversation by the way was not sufficiently interesting to be worthy of record. Arrived at Twitter’s street an idea struck Mrs Frog.

“Ned,” said she, “I’m tired.”

“Well, old girl, you’d better cut home.”

“I think I will, Ned, but first I’ll sit down on this step to rest a bit.”

“All right, old girl,” said Ned, who would have said the same words if she had proposed to stand on her head on the step—so easy was he in his mind as to how his wife spent her time; “if you sit for half-an-hour or so I’ll be back to see you ’ome again. I’m on’y goin’ to Bundle’s shop for a bit o’ baccy. Ain’t I purlite now? Don’t it mind you of the courtin’ days?”

“Ah! Ned,” exclaimed the wife, while a sudden gush of memory brought back the days when he was handsome and kind,—but Ned was gone, and the slightly thawed spring froze up again.

She sat down on the cold step of a door which happened to be somewhat in the shade, and gazed at the opposite windows. There was a light in one of them. She knew it well. She had often watched the shadows that crossed the blind after the gas was lighted, and once she had seen some one carrying something which looked like a baby! It might have been a bundle of soiled linen, or undarned socks, but it might have been Matty, and the thought sent a thrill to the forlorn creature’s heart.

On the present occasion she was highly favoured, for, soon after Ned had left, the shadows came again on the blind, and came so near it as to be distinctly visible. Yes, there could be no doubt now, it was a baby, and as there was only one baby in that house it followed that the baby was her baby—little Matty! Here was something to carry home with her, and think over and dream about. But there was more in store for her. The baby, to judge from the shadowy action of its fat limbs on the blind, became what she called obstropolous. More than that, it yelled, and its mother heard the yell—faintly, it is true, but sufficiently to send a thrill of joy to her longing heart.

Then a sudden fear came over her. What if it was ill, and they were trying to soothe it to rest! How much better she could do that if she only had the baby!

“Oh! fool that I was to part with her!” she murmured, “but no. It was best. She would surely have bin dead by this time.”

The sound of the little voice, however, had roused such a tempest of longing in Mrs Frog’s heart, that, under an irresistible impulse, she ran across the road and rang the bell. The door was promptly opened by Mrs Twitter’s domestic.

“Is—is the baby well?” stammered Mrs Frog, scarce knowing what she said.

“You’ve nothink to do wi’ the baby that I knows on,” returned Mrs Twitter’s domestic, who was not quite so polite as her mistress.

“No, honey,” said Mrs Frog in a wheedling tone, rendered almost desperate by the sudden necessity for instant invention, “but the doctor said I was to ask if baby had got over it, or if ’e was to send round the—the—I forget its name—at once.”

“What doctor sent you?” asked Mrs Twitter, who had come out of the parlour on hearing the voices through the doorway, and with her came a clear and distinct yell which Mrs Frog treasured up in her thinly clad but warm bosom, as though it had been a strain from Paradise. “There must surely be some mistake, my good woman, for my baby is quite well.”

“Oh! thank you, thank you—yes, there must have been some mistake,” said Mrs Frog, scarce able to restrain a laugh of joy at the success of her scheme, as she retired precipitately from the door and hurried away.

She did not go far, however, but, on hearing the door shut, turned back and took up her position again on the door-step.

Poor Mrs Frog had been hardened and saddened by sorrow, and suffering, and poverty, and bad treatment; nevertheless she was probably one of the happiest women in London just then.

“My baby,” she said, quoting part of Mrs Twitter’s remarks with a sarcastic laugh, “no, madam, she’s not your baby yet!”

As she sat reflecting on this agreeable fact, a heavy step was heard approaching. It was too slow for that of Ned. She knew it well—a policeman!

There are hard-hearted policemen in the force—not many, indeed, but nothing is perfect in this world, and there are a few hard-hearted policemen. He who approached was one of these.

“Move on,” he said in a stern voice.

“Please, sir, I’m tired. On’y restin’ a bit while I wait for my ’usband,” pleaded Mrs Frog.

“Come, move on,” repeated the unyielding constable in a tone that there was no disputing. Indeed it was so strong that it reached the ears of Ned Frog himself, who chanced to come round the corner at the moment and saw the policeman, as he imagined, maltreating his wife.

Ned was a man who, while he claimed and exercised the right to treat his own wife as he pleased, was exceedingly jealous of the interference of others with his privileges. He advanced, therefore, at once, and planted his practised knuckles on the policeman’s forehead with such power that the unfortunate limb of the law rolled over in one direction and his helmet in another.

As every one knows, the police sometimes suffer severely at the hands of roughs, and on this occasion that truth was verified, but the policeman who had been knocked down by this prize-fighter was by no means a feeble member of the force. Recovering from his astonishment in a moment, he sprang up and grappled with Ned Frog in such a manner as to convince that worthy he had “his work cut out for him.” The tussle that ensued was tremendous, and Mrs Frog retired into a doorway to enjoy it in safety. But it was brief. Before either wrestler could claim the victory, a brother constable came up, and Ned was secured and borne away to a not unfamiliar cell before he could enjoy even one pipe of the “baccy” which he had purchased.

Thus it came to pass, that when a certain comrade expected to find Ned Frog at a certain mansion in the West-end, prepared with a set of peculiar tools for a certain purpose, Ned was in the enjoyment of board and lodging at Her Majesty’s expense.