Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses.

by B. L. Farjeon

'Thief as he is,' replied Mr. Merrywhistle.

His grief was contagious: Robert Truefit turned away, with a troubled look on his face; Jimmy Virtue preserved a stolid silence, as was his general habit on such occasions. 'What can one good man do?' presently said Robert Truefit, in a low tone; but his voice was singularly clear. 'What can a hundred good men do, each working singly, according to the impulse of his benevolent heart? I honour them for their deeds, and God forbid that I should harbour a wish to check them! Would that more money were as well spent, and that their numbers were increased a hundredfold! They do some good. But is it not cruel to know that Blade-o'-Grass is but one of thousands of human blades who are cursed, shunned, ignored, through no fault of theirs, and who, when circumstances push them into the light, are crushed by System? If they were lepers, their condition would be better. And they might be so different! To themselves, and all around them. To the State; to society. In actual fact, and putting wordy sops in the pan out of the question, what do statesmen do for such poor places as these? Give them gin-shops and an extra number of police. No prompt effort made in the right direction; no clearing away of nest-holes where moral corruption and physical misery fester and ripen. Where legislation is most needed, it moves at a snail's pace. So wrapt up are statesmen in the slow hatching of grand schemes, that they cannot stoop to pour oil upon these festering social wounds. And what is the result? While they legislate, Blades-o'-Grass are springing up all around them, and living poisoned lives. And while they legislate, if there be truth in what preachers preach, souls are being damned by force of circumstance. What should be the aim of those who govern? So to govern as to produce the maximum of human happiness and comfort, and the minimum of human misery and vice. Not to the few--to the many, to all.' He paused, and turned to Mr. Merrywhistle. 'Seven years ago,' he continued, 'we talked of poor Blade-o'-Grass. I told you then--I remember it well--that England was full of such pictures as that hungry ignorant child, with the tiger in her stomach, presented. Seven years before that, it was the same. During that time Blade-o'-Grass has grown up from a baby to a woman. What a childhood must hers have been! I wonder if she ever had a toy! And see what she is now: a woman for whom you fear--what I guess, but will not say. What will she be--where will she be--in seven years from now? Seventy years is the fulness of our age. Carry Blade-o'-Grass onwards for seven years more, and find her an old woman long before she should have reached her prime. What has been done in the last seven years for such as she? What will be done in the next--and the next? There are thousands upon thousands of such babes and girls as she was seven years and twice seven years ago growing up as I speak; contamination is eating into their bones, corrupting their blood, poisoning their instincts for good. What shall be done for them in the next seven years? Pardon me,' he said, breaking off suddenly; 'I have let my feelings run ahead of me perhaps; but I'll stick to what I've said, nevertheless.'

With that he wished them goodnight, and took his leave. Mr. Merrywhistle soon followed him, first ascertaining from Jimmy Virtue the address of Blade-o'-Grass.

Jimmy, being left to his own resources, went to the door to see what sort of a night it was. The rain was still falling drearily. It was too miserable a night for him to take his usual pipe in the open air, and too miserable a night for him to expect to do any business in. So he put up his shutters, and retired to his parlour. Then he took out his greasy pack of cards, and conjured up Jack for a game of All-Fours. With his eye on his opponent, he filled his pipe carefully, lighted it, puffed at it, and cut for deal. He won it, and the first thing he did after that was to turn up a knave (slipping it from the bottom of the pack) and score one. He was in a more than usually reckless and cheating mood. He staked large sums, went double or quits, and double or quits again, and cheated unblushingly. He won a fortune of Jack in an hour; and then contemptuously growled, 'I'll try you at cribbage, old fellow,' The cribbage-board was his table, and he scored the game with a bit of chalk. Jack fared no better at cribbage than he had done at All-Fours. Jimmy had all the good cribs, Jack all the bad ones. By the time that the table was smeared all over with chalk figures, Jimmy was sleepy. He played one last game for an enormous stake, and having won it and ruined Jack, he went to bed contentedly, and slept the sleep of the just.

[TOO LATE.]

Mr. Merrywhistle had no very distinct plan in his mind when he left Jimmy Virtue's shop to visit Blade-o'-Grass. Sincerely commiserating her condition, he wished to put her in the way to get an honest and respectable living, but was deeply perplexed as to the method by which she was to arrive at this desirable consummation. Some small assistance in money he might manage to give her; but in what way could it be applied? by what means was she to be lifted out of that slough into which she had been allowed to sink? And then he feared that she was past training. As Robert Truefit had said, Blade-o'-Grass was a woman now, with a grown-up person's passions and desires firmly rooted in her nature. And he feared something else, also. But he would see her and speak to her freely; good might come of it.

The room she occupied was at the extreme end of Stoney-alley, and Mr. Merrywhistle was soon stumbling along dark passages and up flights of crippled stairs. When he reached the top of the house, as he thought, he tapped at a door, and receiving no answer, turned the handle, and entered. A very old woman, sitting before a very small fire, smiled and mumbled in reply to his questions; and he soon discovered that she was deaf and childish, and that he was in the wrong apartment. As he stumbled into the dark again, a woman, with a child in her' arms, came on to the landing with a candle in her hand, and showed Mr. Merrywhistle that there was still another flight of stairs to mount. Blade-o'-Grass lived up there, the woman said; first door on the right She didn't know if the girl was at home. And then she asked if he was a doctor. No, he answered, surprised at the question; he was not a doctor. The crazy stairs complained audibly as he trod them. He knocked at the first door on the right, and paused.

'You'd better go in, and see, sir,' called the woman from below; 'perhaps she's asleep.' Mr. Merrywhistle hesitated. What right, he thought, had he to intrude on the girl's privacy, and at this time of night? But the knowledge that he was there for no bad purpose made him bold, and he opened the door. A candle that was burning on the table threw a dim light around, but the corners of the miserible apartment were in shade. The woman was right in her conjecture: Blade-o'-Grass was in the room, asleep. She was lying on the ground, dressed, before a mockery of a fire; her head was resting on a stool, round which one arm was thrown. The faintly-flickering flames threw occasional gleams of light on the girl's face, over which, strange to say, a smile was playing, as if her dreams were pleasant ones. The benevolent old gentleman looked round upon the miserable apartment, and sighed. It was a shelter, nothing more--a shelter for want and destitution. Then he looked down upon the form of the sleeping girl, clothed in rags. Child-woman indeed she was. Her pretty face was thin and pale; but there was a happy expression upon it, and once her arm clasped the stool with fond motion, as if she were pressing to her breast something that she loved. Yet, doubtless, there are many stern moralists, philanthropic theorists, and benevolent word-wasters, who would have looked coldly upon this sleeping child, and who--self-elected teachers as they are of what is good and moral--would only have seen in her and her surroundings a text for effervescent platitudes. But the school in which they learn their lessons is as cruel and harsh as the school in which Blade-o'-Grass learns hers is unwholesome and bitter.

Mr. Merrywhistle was debating with himself whether he should arouse her, when a slight motion on his part saved him the trouble of deciding. 'Is that you, Tom?' she asked softly, opening her eyes, and then, seeing a strange figure before her, scrambled to her feet.