“I thought so. Well, after you had passed, he not only applied his left thumb to his nose and spread his fingers, but also put the thumb of his right hand against the little finger of his left, and spread out the other five fingers at you. So, whatever he meant Lady Openhand to receive, he meant you to have twice as much. But Lady Openhand makes a mistake, I think, she does not consider the poor; she only feels deeply for them and gives to them.”
“Only feels and gives!” repeated Mrs Dotropy, with a look of solemn amazement.
Being quite incapable of disentangling or expressing the flood of ideas that overwhelmed her, the good lady relieved herself after a few broken sentences, with the assertion that it was of no use arguing with Ruth, for Ruth would never be convinced.
She was so far right, in that her daughter could not change her mind on the strength of mere dogmatic assertion, even although she was a pliant and teachable little creature. So, at least, Mr Lewis, her pastor, had found her when he tried to impress on her a few important lessons—such as, that it is better to give than to receive; that man is his brother’s keeper; that we are commanded to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, who came to save the lost, to rescue the perishing, and who fed the hungry.
“But, mother,” resumed Ruth, “I want you to go with me to-day to visit some poor people who are not troublesome, who are perfectly clean, are never ill-natured, suspect nothing, and envy nobody.”
“They must indeed be wonderful people,” said Mrs Dotropy, with a laugh at Ruth’s enthusiasm, “quite angelic.”
“They are as nearly so as mortals ever become, I think,” returned Ruth, putting on her hat; “won’t you come, mother?”
Now, Mrs Dotropy had the faculty of giving in gracefully, although she could not argue. Rising with an amused smile, she kissed Ruth’s forehead and went to prepare for a visit to the poor.
Let us now turn to a small street scarcely ten minutes’ walk from the mansion where the above conversation took place.
It was what may be styled a Lilliputian street. Almost everything in it was small. The houses were small; the shops were small; the rents—well, they were certainly not so small as they should have been, the doors and windows were small; and the very children that played in the gutter, with an exceedingly small amount of clothing on them, were rather diminutive. Some of the doors stood open, revealing the fact that it had been thought wise by the builders of the houses to waste no space in lobbies or entrance halls. One or two, however, displayed entries, or passages—dark and narrow—the doors to which were blistered and severely battered, because, being the public property of several families, they had no particular owner to protect them.