"Oh, madam! cannot you do something for us? I heard Mr. Herschel was kind, but he is hard and stern."
"Mr. Herschel never gives alms," Leslie Travers said; "be off!"
"Nay, sir; wait. The child looks wretched and sad. What is it?" Griselda asked.
"Oh, madam! my father was engaged to play at the theatre, and he has fallen down and cannot perform the part. Mr. Palmer is hard, so hard, he says"—the child's voice faltered—"he says it was drink that made him fall—and he has no pity; and we are starving."
The group on the steps of that house in King Street was a study for an artist. The shuddering, weeping child; the stolid chairman; the link-boy, with the torch, which cast a lurid light upon the group; the young man holding the hand of the tall and graceful lady, hooded and cloaked in scarlet, edged with white fur; then the open door behind, where an oil lamp shone dimly, and the maid's figure, in her large white cap and apron, made a white light in the gloom. It was a picture indeed, suggestive of the sharp contrasts of life, and yet no one could have divined that in that scene lay concealed the elements of a story so tragic and sorrowful, yet to be developed, and then unsuspected and unknown.
"Wait," Griselda said. "Tell me, child, if I can help you."
"We are starving, madam, and my father is so ill!"
"I have no money," Griselda exclaimed. "Mr. Travers, if you can help her, please do so."
"It is at your desire, for I can refuse you nothing; but I know Mr. Herschel is right, and that alms given like this, is but the throwing of money into a bottomless pit."
As he was speaking the young man had taken a leathern purse from the wide side-pocket of his blue coat, and had singled out a sixpence and a large heavy penny with the head of the King in his youth upon it—big old-fashioned penny-pieces, of which none are current now.