Aspel, whose curly flaxen hair almost brushed the ceiling, brought himself down to a lower region by taking a chair, while he said with a meaning smile—
“Ah! Miss Maylands, the circumstances are entirely altered now—besides,” he added with a sudden change of tone and manner, “that inexorable man-made demon, Business, calls me to London.”
“I hope Business intends to keep you here,” said Miss Lillycrop, busying herself at the tea-table.
“That remains to be seen,” returned Aspel. “If I find that—”
“The loaf and butter, ma’am,” said Tottie, announcing these articles at the door as if they were visitors.
“Hush, child; leave them in the kitchen till I ask for them,” said Miss Lillycrop with a quiet laugh. “My little maid is such an original, Mr Aspel.”
“She’s a very beautiful, though perhaps somewhat dishevelled, original,” returned Aspel, “of which one might be thankful to possess even an inferior copy.”
“Indeed you are right,” rejoined Miss Lillycrop with enthusiasm; “she’s a perfect little angel—come, draw in your chairs; closer this way, Phil, so—a perfect little angel—you take sugar I think? Yes. Well, as I was saying, the strange thing about her was that she was born and bred—thus far—in one of the worst of the back slums of London, and her father is an idle drunkard. I fear, also, a criminal.”
“How strange and sad,” said Aspel, whose heart was easily touched and sympathies roused by tales of sorrow. “But how comes it that she has escaped contamination?”
“Because she has a good—by which I mean a Christian—mother. Ah! Mr Aspel, you have no idea how many unknown and unnoticed gems there are half smothered in the moral mud and filth of London. It is a wonderful—a tremendous city;—tremendous because of the mighty influences for good as well as evil which are constantly at work in it. There is an army of moral navvies labouring here, who are continually unearthing these gems, and there are others who polish them. I have the honour to be a member of this army. Dear little Tottie is one of the gems, and I mean, with God’s blessing, to polish her. Of course, I can’t get her all to myself,” continued Miss Lillycrop with a sigh, “for her mother, who is a washer-woman, won’t part with her, but she has agreed to come and work for me every morning for a few hours, and I can get her now and then of an evening. My chief regret is that the poor thing has a long long way to walk from her miserable home to reach me. I don’t know how she will stand it. She has been only a few days in my service.”