Mr. Heatherley lived in a pair of agreeable rooms on the ground-floor in a street a short distance from the City Road. Here Helen Norman arrived on the following morning, after some little difficulty in discovering the address, and was admitted by a most unusually neat servant girl, the sight of whom impressed her with the feeling that this neatness was directly or indirectly due to Mr. Heatherley’s presence in the house. On entering the parlour she found the clergyman seated at the table, side by side with a very shock-headed youngster of some twelve years old, who appeared to have been reading aloud from an open book before him.

“Well, that will do for this morning, James,” said Mr. Heatherley, after rising and requesting his visitor to be seated. “Rather better than usual, I think. Look over bonus, niger, and tristis again for Monday’s lesson. Good-bye.”

The lad collected his books together and went off at a sort of trot, turning towards Helen, as he went out, a bright though rather ugly face.

“A little pupil of mine,” said the clergyman, by way of explanation. “His parents are unable to give him more than a very poor education, and as he is a sharp little chap I have got into the way of teaching him a little at odd times. On Saturday he doesn’t go to school, so we have our lessons rather later than usual. I am glad we have a fine morning, Miss Norman. I almost think we had better take our walk first of all, then return and discuss your plans with the work fresh in our minds. Do you approve?”

As he spoke, he arranged a few books which he took from the table in their places in a well-filled book-case. Helen replied to his proposition with a cheerful assent, watching him the while.

“Latin, I suppose, you have not attempted to subdue?” he asked, turning a curious face towards his visitor.

“I can read Virgil and Horace with tolerable ease,” replied Helen. “But I am afraid my knowledge of the niceties of the language is very imperfect.”

“And Greek?” said Mr. Heatherley, without affecting surprise.

“Of Greek I have a very trifling knowledge.”

“Young ladies usually devote more attention to modern than to ancient languages, I believe,” said the clergyman.

“And I am no exception to the rule,” replied Helen.

“You know Italian?”

“Pretty well.”

“Ha! I envy you. I have a desperate desire to read Dante in the original — but time, time, time!”

“You would very quickly learn sufficient of the language for that,” said Helen, smiling slightly.

“You think so? Ah, well, I must make an attempt one of these days. In the meantime we have our work before us, Miss Norman. You are ready?”

“Quite.”

“Good. Then we will set out.”

As they issued into the street, Mr. Heatherley consulted a small note-book, in which appeared to be jotted memoranda concerning the poor he visited daily. Conversing agreeably as he walked — always in the same pithy, energetic language, showing considerable information, both as regards books and men, and always such a healthy freedom from mere conventionality that Helen felt herself more and more at home with him — he led his companion by degrees into dark, dirty, narrow streets, where low-browed arches frowned on either side, leading off into courts and alleys of indescribable foulness, and over-running with a population as horrible to view as their own abodes.

“Now,” said the clergyman, as they paused for a moment to gaze down a court not more than three feet wide, the entrance into which was down a flight of broken stone steps, and at the other end of which was just visible another low archway precisely like the entrance to a kennel, “I should neither advise nor permit you, Miss Norman, to venture into places such as that. The worst of these courts are the haunts of such unutterable brutality and wickedness that it is often dangerous for hardy men to venture into them. For a woman to do so would be folly. It would be quite impossible for her to do good there at all adequate to the risk she ran. I trust that you will confine your visits to these wider streets. God knows there is enough wickedness everywhere in this neighbourhood, but you are not so remote from assistance in the open streets. And here we come to our first place of call. If you will follow me I will enter here.”

They stood before a second-hand clothes shop, the front of which was quite open to the street, where an old woman and a young girl sat on the floor amidst heaps of ragged clothing, stitching remnants together to form saleable articles. They looked up as the clergyman entered, and the old woman nodded a palsy-stricken head, the total baldness of which gave her a hideous appearance, and began to mutter unintelligibly between her bare gums.

“What does your grandmother say, Kitty?” asked Mr. Heatherley of the young girl.

The latter bent her ear close to the old woman’s mouth before replying.

“She says she’s better today. She’s been a wearin’ the flannel you giv’ her for her rheumatics, and she thinks as how it done her good.”

“That’s right. I’m glad to hear it. Is your mother in, Kitty?”

“She’s gone to the station,” replied the girl.

“What now? More trouble between her and your father?”

“Father come ‘ome this mornin’ drunker than ever,” said the girl, in a matter of fact way, continuing her stitching as she spoke. “Mother got up, and they begun to ‘ave words; an’ then father ‘it her on the ‘cad with his boot-heel, as he’d just took horff. And mother’s ‘ead bleeded — my! how it did bleed! An’ so she’s gone to the station for another summons, you see.”

Mr. Heatherley glanced at Helen to see the effect of this city-idyl upon her. She was rather paler than usual, but listened attentively to what was said.

“And where’s your father?” pursued the clergyman.

“Well, father got mad like, you see, at some words as mother used to him about ‘Arry as used to lodge ’ere. She said as ‘ow he’d have been a better ‘usbin to her than father ever was. So father got mad like, an’ he said as he’d go and murder ‘Arry this mornin’. An’ he’s gone to do it.”

The calm na?veté with which the girl uttered these last words chilled Helen’s very blood. The clergyman, more accustomed to such remarks, reassured her with a look, and proceeded with the conversation.

“Any new lodgers yet, Kitty?”

“Yes, there’s one — a young woman in the third floor back. Leastwise so mother tell’d me. I ain’t seen her.”

“What does she do?”

“Don’t do nothink, mother said.”

“How does she pay for her lodging then?”

“Don’t know.”

“I suppose she’s out now?”

“No; she ain’t comed out this mornin’ yet, cos I’s been here sen’ seven o’clock.”

“Is she ill?”

“Very like.”

“Could we go up to see her?”

“Why not? Don’t suppose as you’ll steal nothink, Mr. ‘Eatherley!”

Leave thus graciously granted, Mr. Heatherley led the way through the shop into a pitch-dark passage, where he was obliged to strike a match, a box of which he fortunately carried in his pocket, before he could venture to lead Helen up the mouldy staircase. The walls, Helen observed, had once been papered, but they now so reeked with damp that only an old strip or two still hung loose to indicate where the paper had been. She could feel the stairs often bend beneath her feet, so rotten were they. On reaching the third floor they tapped at the back-room door, and received permission to enter, delivered in a shrill, childish voice.

In a garret, empty but for a small iron bedstead and a wooden stool, sat, upon the latter article, a child, whose age the visitors at first put down for some twelve years. She was dressed in rags which scarcely concealed her nakedness, and on her lap lay an infant sleeping. The elder child’s face was thick with grime, the only places where the original colour of the skin could be discovered being narrow streaks from the corners of the eyes, a sufficient indication that she cried long and frequently. She seemed frightened at the entrance of the strangers, and quickly stood up, gathering the infant carefully in her arms.

Mr. Heatherley instinctively yielded place to Helen. She seemed the more suitable person to commence the conversation.

“They told us down-stairs,” said Helen, “that there was a lodger here who was in want of employment. Is it you, my poor child?”

“Yes, mum. I’s got no ‘ployment. I on’y wish I ‘ad.”

“But are you quite alone here?”

“Yes, mum.”

“Have you no father or mother?”

“Both doin’ six weeks, mum.”

Helen looked interrogatively at Mr. Heatherley, who whispered that she meant to say her parents were both in prison for six weeks.

“But how do you feed your little sister? Is it sister or brother?”

“It’s my child, mum,” said the little creature, with perfect simplicity, without a trace of shame.

“What! your child!”

“Yes, mum,” returned the other, surprised at the astonishment her remark had excited.

“But — but how old are you?” asked Helen, blushing as she spoke.

“Turned fifteen, mum.”

Here Mr. Heatherley came forward.

“If you will speak to this poor child for a few minutes, Miss Norman,” he said, “I will return directly. There is another lodger below I should like to see.”

He left the room, and Helen, after a brief pause, continued her questions.

“Are — are you married?” she asked.

“No, mum, not yet,” returned the child.

“Does the father of your child support you now?”

“No, mum, not yet.”

“Who is he? What does he do?”

“He’s a butcher-boy, mum.”

“Does he mean to marry you?”

“Some day, mum. When he gets fifteen shillin’ a week, that is.”

“How much does he get now?”

“Nine an’ six, mum.”

“But how are you going to live for the present?” asked Helen, bending down to stroke the miserable little baby’s face, at which a look of pleasure and pride lit up the young mother’s countenance.

“He’s big for his age, an’ he grows every day, mum, he does,” she remarked.

Helen could scarcely restrain the tears from rushing to her eyes.

“How are you living now?” she repeated.

“I’ve got four shillin’s as mother give me the night afore she was locked up, mum, an’ that’ll last me a few days. And when that’s gone, I — I — oh, I really don’t know what I’ll do, mum!”

Here, for the first time, her fortitude broke down, and she wept bitterly. The baby set up a piercing shriek out of sympathy, and Helen’s tears at length refused to be held back. At this moment Mr. Heatherley again entered the room.

“Are you quite well?” asked Helen, hastily brushing away her tears with a handkerchief.

“Yes, mum, thanke, mum.”

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