‘You will be helped,’ said the Professor, ‘in a quarter where you least suspect. I, too, with my girls, have done my little.’
She proceeded to open a packet of papers, which she laid before the young Chief.
‘What are these?’ he asked.
‘They are called Tracts for the Times,’ she replied. ‘They are addressed to the Women of England.’
He took them up and read them carefully one by one.
‘Who wrote these?’
‘The girls and I together. We posted them wherever we could get addresses—to all the undergraduates, to all the students of hospitals, Inns of Court, and institutions of every kind; to quiet country vicarages; to rich people and poor people,—wherever there was a chance, we directed a tract.’
‘You have done well,’ said the Bishop.
‘They have been found out, and a reward is offered for the printers. As they were printed in the cellars of this house, the reward is not likely to be claimed. They were all posted here, which makes the Government the more uneasy. They believe in the spread of what they call irreligion among the undergraduates. Unfortunately, the undergraduates are as yet only discontented, because all avenues are choked.’
The Bishop took up one of the tracts again, and read it thoughtfully. It was headed, Tracts for the Times: For Young Women, and was the first number. The second title was Work and Women.