"There is enough to do," he said; "everything is lacking here; there is severe poverty, united to the most scrupulous tenderness and the most tender love on the part of this brother and sister. I stumbled on the case, and will do professionally all that is needed. And I have a friend who would undoubtedly come to the rescue, but she is crowded just now.

I shall be rejoiced to report to her a helper. Do you know Joy Saunders?

Well, I wish you did; she is one whom you could appreciate. She is young, though, and without a husband to guard her, and there are some places to which she cannot come."

"Has she learned that important fact?" asked Mr. Roberts, with a significant smile. Then some explanation seemed necessary. "This lady,"

he said, "tried the alley alone yesterday, and lost her way, and went lower down,--quite near to Burk Street, I imagine."

"And what happened?" The quick question and the doctor's tone suggested possibilities not pleasant.

"Oh, she met one of her new recruits,--as hard a boy, so one of the policemen on this beat tells me, as there is in the row,--and pressed him into service to escort her back to civilization; and strange to say, the fellow did it without placing any tricks."

The doctor turned on the small lady a curious glance.

"I think you may be able to do something, even for Dirk Colson," he said.

"Do you know him?"

He laughed over the eagerness of the question.

"Never heard of him before. I was only thinking of our friend's description of his awfulness. Ah, whom have we here?"

For the door had opened abruptly, and a pair of great blue eyes, set in a frame of tawny hair, all in a frizzle, had peered in on them. The vision was clothed in garments so torn the wonder was that they stayed on at all, and there was a general look of abject poverty about her to which Sallie Calkins, with all the bareness of her lot, was a stranger.

She stood for just a moment, as if transfixed by astonishment at the unwonted sight in the room, then turned and sped away as swiftly and silently as she had come.

"That is Dirk's sister," Sallie Calkins said, coming forward, her homely face aglow with shame. "She isn't a bad girl, ma'am, she doesn't mean to be, but she has a dreadful time. Her mother is sickly, and has to go out washing, times when she isn't able to sit up; and there'll be days when she can't hold up her head; and the father is bad, ma'am, and drinks, and swears, and sells things for drink till there ain't nothing left to sell; and Mart hasn't anything to mend her clothes with, and she doesn't know how, anyway; and she hasn't even got a comb to comb her hair with, her father he took it to sell; and everything there is horrid, and Dirk, he's awful."

It was strange, she could not herself account for it; but with every added word of misery that set poor Dirk Colson lower and lower in the scale of humanity, there seemed to come into this woman's heart, and shine in her face, an a.s.surance that he was to be a "chosen vessel unto G.o.d."

The doctor was watching her again, curious, apparently, to see how this pitiful appeal for forbearance in judging of poor Mart affected her, and something in his face made her say, speaking low, "an inheritance among them which are sanctified."

"Amen!" he said. And there came to Mrs. Roberts a feeling that this earnest prayer, for the second time repeated by two men who prayed, was a sort of seal from the Master.

She turned away from both gentlemen then; the tears were very near the surface. She must do something to tone down the beating of her heart.

Sallie was at hand, and she went with her to another corner of the room, and a low-toned conversation was carried on, sc.r.a.ps of which floated back to the gentlemen in the form of "sheets," "grape jelly," "mutton broth," "a soft pillow," and the like.

"I feel my patient growing better," the doctor said, with satisfaction.

"Is there no father here?" Mr. Roberts asked.

The doctor shook his head, but answered:--

"There is the most pitiful apology for a father that I ever saw,--a mere wreck of a man! Spends his time in a sort of weak drinking, if I may coin a phrase to describe him; he actually uses no energy even in that business. Just staggers around and bemoans his lot; a most unfortunate man, in his own estimation, with whom the world, through no fault of his, has gone wrong. He is never downright intoxicated, and never free from the effects of liquor. He is much like a wilted leaf in the hands of this boy and girl. They could pitch him out of the window without much difficulty, and if the fall did not kill him he would shed tears and say it was a hard world. But now, what do we see, when the name of father is so dishonored,--made a wreck, as it were? Why, the order of nature is reversed, and these children take on the protective. They are father and mother, and he is the weak, sinning child. The way that that boy and girl have worked to keep their miserable father from starving or freezing is something to astonish the very angels. They shield him, too; n.o.body who wants to reach their hearts must blame him. They are a study!--as different from the other inhabitants of the alley as the sky is different from that mud-hole down there. It isn't a good simile, either. There is no religion in their efforts. They are the veriest heathen."

"How do you account for the development?"

The doctor shook his head:--

"I don't account for it; it is abnormal. There must have been a mother who left her impress. I can't learn anything about the mother--she died when the girl was an infant; but I would like to know her history. I venture to a.s.sert that she belonged to Christ, and that a gleam of the divine pity that she saw in him, and loved, left its impress on her children. That is somewhat mystical," he added, smiling. "I rarely talk in this way; it must have been your wife who set me off."

"But she is the most practical and energetic of beings!"

"Ay, so are the angels, I fancy; and make us think of heaven directly we hear the rustle of their wings. Has your wife been a Christian long?"

"Barely two years since she began to think of these things."

"I thought as much. She impresses me as one who is being led; who does not choose to go alone; has not learned how, indeed. A very few Christians never learn how, and with them the Lord does his special work. Well, sir; I must go. I'm glad to have met you, and glad to leave you here. Good morning!"

CHAPTER X.

"AND SHE ALWAYS TRIED."

Other business was transacted that morning which brought results. A curious habit of Mrs. Roberts',--one which, perhaps, most strongly marked the difference between her ways of working and those of other people,--was that of appealing to the person at hand for information on any subject which chanced to be the one prominent in her mind at the time.

Where other and more systematic persons would have said, "He is not the one to ask about this matter! there is no reason for supposing that he has any knowledge in this direction!" Mrs. Roberts would say: "I cannot be sure that he may not be able to give just the information which I need. In any case, what harm will it do to try?" And she always tried.

It was on this principle that she arrested Dr. Everett's speedy departure with a question:--

"Dr. Everett, are you familiar with boarding-houses for young men?"

Something like a vision swept instantly before the doctor, in which he saw the long line of young men, and the long line of boarding-houses, in the world, and he laughed with eyes and lips, the question seemed so queerly put.

"With how many of them, madam?" There was amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice, but there was also curiosity,--he wanted to know what this original little lady was in search of.

"One would do, if it were of just the right stamp. I'll tell you what I want,--a nice, quiet, comfortable _home_ sort of place, with a small room, capable of being warmed, a single bedstead, with a pa.s.sably good bed, and a moderate rate of board. Are not those modest enough requirements?"

"Not at all! They are preposterous! A boarding-house to which one could conveniently apply the word '_home!_' _Fire_ in a young man's room!

He is expected to enjoy freezing in a city; and if he come from the country, he should be grateful for the privilege! But the idea of calling for a good bed! That is the wildest suggestion of all! Has she ever boarded, Mr. Roberts?"

"Not at a boarding-house, at least," said that gentleman, enjoying the fun.

But Mrs. Roberts looked grave.

"Are you serious?" she asked, gently. "Is there no chance in this great city for a Christian young man to have the ordinary comforts of common life; just a little quiet room where he can pray, and where he can invite some tempted soul, and try to help him? Doesn't it seem all wrong?"

The laugh was gone from the doctor's face. There was a look of keen interest and genuine respect.

"How many young men are you thinking about? There are many Christians, I believe, among that cla.s.s,--poor young men, away from home,--and I have reason to fear that their chances for comfortable retirement are very scarce. I have thought about the problem somewhat how to help them. In the concrete, I don't see the way. Of how many are you thinking?"

"I am willing to think about them all," Mrs. Roberts said,--and now it was her turn to laugh,--"but I am panning for just one. I cannot work in great ways, but I thought I might help one."

"Exactly! Mr. Roberts, if every Christian in our city would undertake to help _one_, the problem would be solved. Well, there is one boarding-house to which the word 'home' may properly be applied; and there is one small room on the third floor vacated yesterday. I wonder if the Master wants it for your young man? It seems to me if there is any one thing more than another that we need in that house just now it is a Christian young man. Of what type is your friend? Will he help or hinder a gay young scamp much sought after by Satan?"

"He will try hard to help," said both Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. And before they parted the doctor had taken Mr. Ried's address, and promised to call on him and negotiate the matter.

"That plan will work in two ways," said Mrs. Roberts, gleefully. "Mr.