"My lady is much obliged, and begs you will come and lunch to-morrow at

two."

I passed over the manner in which she gave her message, and the dreadful

boldness of her look. I thanked this young castaway; and I said, in a

tone of Christian interest, "Will you favour me by accepting a tract?"

She looked at the title. "Is it written by a man or a woman, Miss? If

it's written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If

it's written by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about

it." She handed me back the tract, and opened the door. We must sow the

good seed somehow. I waited till the door was shut on me, and slipped

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the tract into the letter-box. When I had dropped another tract through

the area railings, I felt relieved, in some small degree, of a heavy

responsibility towards others.

We had a meeting that evening of the Select Committee of the

Mothers'-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent

Charity is--as all serious people know--to rescue unredeemed fathers'

trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the

part of the irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit

the proportions of the innocent son. I was a member, at that time,

of the select committee; and I mention the Society here, because my

precious and admirable friend, Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, was associated

with our work of moral and material usefulness. I had expected to see

him in the boardroom, on the Monday evening of which I am now writing,

and had proposed to tell him, when we met, of dear Aunt Verinder's

arrival in London. To my great disappointment he never appeared. On

my expressing a feeling of surprise at his absence, my sisters of the

Committee all looked up together from their trousers (we had a great

pressure of business that night), and asked in amazement, if I had not

heard the news. I acknowledged my ignorance, and was then told, for the

first time, of an event which forms, so to speak, the starting-point

of this narrative. On the previous Friday, two gentlemen--occupying

widely-different positions in society--had been the victims of an

outrage which had startled all London. One of the gentlemen was Mr.

Septimus Luker, of Lambeth. The other was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

Living in my present isolation, I have no means of introducing the

newspaper-account of the outrage into my narrative. I was also deprived,

at the time, of the inestimable advantage of hearing the events related

by the fervid eloquence of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. All I can do is to

state the facts as they were stated, on that Monday evening, to me;

proceeding on the plan which I have been taught from infancy to adopt

in folding up my clothes. Everything shall be put neatly, and everything

shall be put in its place. These lines are written by a poor weak woman.

From a poor weak woman who will be cruel enough to expect more?




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