Emmie looked with smiling admiration on her young brother, about to undertake with characteristic resolution what she regarded as a Herculean task. But no trace of a smile lingered on her lips as Bruce calmly went on,—
“I can thus do something for the boys, but the care of the women and the girls naturally falls upon you.”
“Upon me!” cried Emmie, looking aghast.
“Visiting the poor,” continued Bruce, “is not a kind of business which our father can undertake; he has been accustomed to office-work all his life, and, as he told me to-day, he cannot begin at his age an occupation which is to him so utterly new.”
“It would be utterly new to me, and I dare not attempt cottage-visiting!” cried Emmie, whose benevolent efforts had hitherto been confined to subscribing to charities or missions, and working delicate trifles to be sold at fancy bazaars.
“You are young, dear,” observed Bruce Trevor.
“And that is just the reason why I should not be sent amongst all those dreadful people!” cried Emmie. “I might meet with rudeness, or drunkenness, or infectious cases. I cannot think how you could ever wish me to undertake such a work! Wait till I am forty or fifty years old before you ask me to visit these poor.”
“And in the meantime,” said Bruce, “children are growing up ignorant of the very first truths of religion; wretched women, who know no joy in this world, see no prospect of peace in another; the sick lack medicine, the hungry, food; the widow has no one to comfort her, and the dying—die without hope!”
Emmie clasped her hands, and looked pleadingly into the face of her brother. “Oh! what do you ask me to do?” she exclaimed; “do you want me to visit all these cottages, and the public-houses as well!”
“Not all the cottages, and most certainly not the public-houses,” answered Bruce with a smile. “See,” he continued, pointing to different parts of his chart, “I have marked with an E those dwellings which I thought that a lady might visit.”