“It may be that she is working still, in the person of her brother.”
He shook his head energetically, though his face flushed.
“No, I can only blunder vaguely over work that I know she, with her energetic ways and quick wits, could have done, and done well. It happens that she was especially interested in a class of people of whom I know something. They need help, and I don't know how to help them. It seems to me that she could have done it.”
“Will you tell me who the people are?”
“It is a set of boys for whom nobody cares,” he said, speaking sadly; “it hardly seems possible that there could ever have been a time when anybody cared for them, though I suppose their mothers did when they were little fellows.”
Thus spoke the ignorant young man,—ignorant of the depths to which sin will sink human nature, but rich in the memory of mother-love.
“I think of my sister Ester in connection with them,” he said, speaking apologetically, “because she was peculiarly interested in wild young fellows like them; she thought they might be reached,—that there might be ways invented for reaching them, such as had not been yet. She had plans, and they were good ones. I thought so then, little fellow that I was, and I think so now, only nobody is at work carrying them out; and I wonder sometimes if Ester could have been needed in heaven half as much as she is needed on earth. She used to talk to me a great deal about what might be done. I think now that she wanted to put me in the way of taking up some of the work that she would have done; but she mistook her material. I can't do it.”
“Are you sure? You are young yet, and besides, you may be doing more than you think. Couldn't I help? What is there that needs doing for these particular young men?”
“Everything!” he said, excitedly. “If you should see them you would get a faint idea of it. They come occasionally down to the Sabbath-school at the South End; in fact, they come quite frequently, though I'm sure I can't see why. It certainly isn't for any good that they get. Their actions, Mrs. Roberts, surpass anything that I ever imagined.”
“Who is their teacher?”