“I hate to think of your being alone,” he said wistfully.
“You mustn’t think of it! I’m a great deal better by myself than I should be with anyone else in the world just now. And I have lots of visitors: daddy pretty often, of course, and Winnie when she is at home, though she’s been away so much lately—more engagements than ever this winter, and most of them in the country, worse luck!”
“So Austin’s left at a loose end, eh?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t seen him for some days. Winnie will be back for Christmas.”
“You’re going to her then?” he asked quickly.
“I’m going about with her. As usual, we shall have quite a big day—a midday dinner in Bermondsey, high tea and a Christmas tree at Battersea, and a beano for the padre’s poorest, and possibly blackest, sheep in the evening. Winnie will be a bright particular star, of course—they’d keep her singing for hours if they could! While I shall be just an all-round helper, in my old canteen get-up.”
“Good! I shall be thinking of you all the time. But don’t wear yourself out, darling,” he said tenderly.
It was no new thing for her to devote herself through most of the season of conventional “festivity” to the poorest of her fellow-creatures, bringing a few hours of mirth and warmth and good fare to the starving and the squalid, giving to many of them fresh hope and strength that perhaps might help them to struggle out of the abyss of misery and destitution into which they had fallen.
Last year he had been with her, and a wonderful experience it was—an utter revelation to him of the grim underworld of humanity here in the greatest city of the world, the very heart of “Christian” civilization! Very many of the guests they had then helped to entertain had passed most of their lives in prison: now the prison walls had closed around himself. He indeed was innocent; he had not sunk into the grim underworld—had not as yet endured the lot of a common convict; but already he could sympathize, as never before, with the prisoners and captives, with all who suffered, whether for their own sins or for the sins of others.
“Oh, I shan’t wear myself out,” Grace assured him. “I shall be happier on duty. Mother is going down to Hove, as usual, and insists on father going too. He doesn’t want to, but it’s less trouble to give way than to argue the point; and the change may do him good. He’s not very fit, poor daddy!”