"If you like—but not solitary."
"What has been done for the mass of these boys in these schools? what has been accomplished, I mean?"
"I have given you but one instance out of many, many individual instances."
"Then you can afford to be generous and give me another."
Perhaps he said this only because he wanted to have her go on talking; perhaps Eleanor divined that; however she hesitated a moment and went on.
"Lord Cushley, with some other friends, has just provided for the emigration to Australia of near a dozen promising cases of these boys."
"Was Eleanor Powle another of the friends?"
"No; I had not that honour. These are reclaimed boys, mind; reclaimed from the very lowest and most miserable condition; and they are going out with every prospect of respectability and every promise of doing well. Do you want to know the antecedents of one among them?"
"By all means!"
"Notice them. First, slavery under two drunken people, one of them his mother, who sent him out to steal for them; and refused him even the shelter of their wretched home if he came to it with empty hands. At such times, thrust out houseless and hungry, to wander where he could, he led a life of such utter wretchedness, that at length he determined to steal for himself, and to go home no more. Then came years of struggling vagrancy—during which, Mr. Carlisle, the prison was his pleasantest home and only comfortable shelter; and whenever he was turned out of it he stood in London streets helpless and hopeless but to renew his old ways of thieving and starvation. Nobody had told him better; no one had shewed the child kindness; was he to blame?"