Mr. Fuller set about making Poppie's acquaintance. And first he applied to Mattie, in order to find out what kind of thing Poppie liked. Mattie told him lollipops. But Mr. Fuller preferred attacking the town of Mansoul at the gate of one of the nobler senses, if possible.—He tried Lucy, who told him about the bit of red glass and the buttons. So Mr. Fuller presented his friendship's offering to Poppie in the shape of the finest kaleidoscope he could purchase. It was some time before she could be taught to shut one eye and look with the other; but when at length she succeeded in getting a true vision of the wonders in the inside of the thing, she danced and shouted for joy. This confirmed Mr. Fuller's opinion that it was through her eyes, and not through her ears, that he must approach Poppie's heart. She had never been accustomed to receive secondary impressions: all her impressions, hitherto, had come immediately through the senses. Mr. Fuller therefore concluded that he could reach her mind more readily through the seeing of her eyes than such hearing of the ears as had to be converted by the imagination into visual forms before it could make any impression. He must get her to ask questions by showing her eyes what might suggest them. And Protestantism having deprived the Church of almost all means of thus appealing to the eye as an inlet of truth, he was compelled to supply the deficiency as he best could. I do not say that Mr. Fuller would have filled his church with gorgeous paintings as things in general, and artists in especial, are. He shrunk in particular from the more modern representations of our Lord given upon canvas, simply because he felt them to be so unlike him, showing him either as effeminately soft, or as pompously condescending; but if he could have filled his church with pictures in which the strength exalted the tenderness, and the majesty was glorified by the homeliness, he would have said that he did not see why painted windows should be more consistent with Protestantism than painted walls. Lacking such aids, he must yet provide as he could that kind of instruction which the early Church judged needful for those of its members who were in a somewhat similar condition to that of Poppie. He therefore began searching the print-shops, till he got together about a dozen of such engravings, mostly from the old masters, as he thought would represent our Lord in a lovable aspect, and make the child want to have them explained. For Poppie had had no big family Bible with pictures, to pore over in her homeless childhood; and now she had to go back to such a beginning.
By this time he had so far ingratiated himself with her that she was pleased to accompany Mattie to tea with him, and then the pictures made their appearance. This took place again and again, till the pictures came to be looked for as part of the entertainment—Mr. Fuller adding one now and then, as he was fortunate in his search, for he never passed a fresh print-shop without making inquiry after such engravings.
Meantime Poppie went out crossing-sweeping by fits and starts. Her father neither encouraged nor prevented her.
One afternoon of a cold day, when the wind from the east was blowing the darkness over the city, and driving all who had homes and could go to them home for comfort, they were walking hand in hand in Farringdon Street—a very bleak, open place. Poppie did not feel the cold nearly so much as her father, but she did blow upon the fingers of her disengaged hand now and then notwithstanding.
"Have a potato to warm you, Poppie," said her father, as they came up to one of those little steam-engines for cooking potatoes, which stand here and there on the edges of the pavements about London, blowing a fierce cloud of steam from their little funnels, so consoling to the half-frozen imagination.
"Jolly!" cried Poppie, running up to the man, and laying her hand on the greasy sleeve of his velveteen coat.
"I say, Jim, give us a ha'porth," she said.
"Why, 'tain't never you, Poppie?" returned the man.
"Why ain't it?" said Poppie. "Here's my father. I've found one, and a good 'un, Jim."
The man looked at Poppie's dress, then at Mr. Spelt, touched the front of his cloth cap, and said: