"'I know,' said Agnes, tears coming into her eyes. 'It is terrible! Herded as they are together, without love, or personal sympathy, the evil which is always surrounding them works like leaven. Do you know, Vera,' she continued, turning to her friend, 'that the little things when they came to me at the Orphanage often did not know how to kiss. Oh! it made my heart ache, trying to teach a little girl of seven to kiss me.'
"'Yet these are not the most painful cases, to my mind,' the Canon said. 'Only last week two children, such dear little things, were brought in by the relieving officer. Their mother, a widow, had for four years struggled hard to support them, but work for which she was unfitted, at last brought on consumption. When she died there was nothing for it but to bring them to the pauper school. They will now have to be separated from each other. The boy, who is a plucky little fellow of nine, has always looked after his younger sister, and when he heard that she must be taken from him I never saw such abject misery on a child's face. "She sha'n't go," he said. "I promised mother to look after her--she sha'n't go!" And the two poor little lonely things clung together and had to be separated when they fell asleep. I would not let the officer tear them apart.'
"'It's shameful!' Vera said. 'Why do people let such things be?'
"'God only knows!' the clergyman answered. 'Because they are, I suppose, too selfish to care. If they could only be made to see for themselves the misery, it would not be tolerated; but they pay the poor-rate and think no more about it. Would that some voice could make them hear; the evil could so easily be remedied.'
"'It sha'n't happen in the case you have mentioned, any way,' Vera said; 'shall it, Agnes? We will have them here and look after them, poor little things.' And Agnes, whose heart was too full for words, could only answer by getting up and kissing her friend.
"Thus it came to pass that the work began, but no one with a heart can begin such a work of love and stop. I have known women fairly well off start such an undertaking, and nearly starve themselves to death for the sake of the little ones. There is always one more that must be saved; the home is full, the money running out, but the sorrowful face pleads too strongly, and room must be found. And so it was with Vera and Agnes. Somerville could soon not contain its inmates. A new home was built in the park; fresh hands had to be employed.
"There was no danger for Vera now; in such work there is no time for weariness or sin. Little hands drag the selfishness out of those who tend them; tiny lips satisfy the aching want of love. Happiness that has so long evaded pursuit, comes unsought and overwhelms the givers. Faith, never learned through doctrine, is discovered by the evidence of a love-awakened heart when it first realizes that such as these little ones are the angels who behold the Father's face; and that inasmuch as we have done it unto one of the least of these, we have done it to our Saviour; and through Him found salvation."
PART V
CHAPTER XVI
When I next went over to spend the evening with Sydney I reminded him that there was a room in his house which he had promised some day to show me.