‘I was a poor little street Arab once,’ he said; ’a forlorn boy with no one to love him or to care for him.  But I made friends with an old man in the attic of the lodging-house who had a barrel-organ.’

‘That barrel-organ?’ I asked.

‘The very same,’ he said, ’and he loved it as if it was a child.  When he was too ill to take it out himself, I took it for him, and that was how I first saw your mother.’

‘Was she married then?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said with a smile; ’she was quite a little girl, about the age of our Marjorie.  She used to run to her nursery window as soon as she heard me begin to play.  I let her turn the organ one day, and she said she liked all the tunes, but she liked “Home, Sweet Home” the best of all.’

‘Did she?’ I said.  ’Yes, I have often heard her sing it; she sang me to sleep with it many a time.’

‘As I played it,’ he went on, ’she would speak to me of the Home, Sweet Home above; child as she was, she knew the way to that home, and she soon found out that I knew nothing about it.  “You can’t go to heaven if you don’t love Jesus, organ boy,” she said, and the tears ran down from her dear little eyes as she said it.

’I could not forget those words, and I was determined to find out the way to the home of which she spoke.

’My old master was dying; he had only another month to live, and for his sake I must learn quickly the way to be saved.  I attended a mission service, and I learnt first that no sin can enter the gates of the Heavenly City.  But I learnt more.  I learnt that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth from all sin.

’Your mother taught me a prayer one day when I went to see her.  I have said that prayer, morning and evening, ever since.  She gave me a bunch of snowdrops, tied up with dark green leaves, and she told me to say as I looked at them, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

He stopped for a minute or two after this, and gazed into the fire; the memory of those old days had stirred him deeply.

‘Please go on,’ I said, for I longed to hear more.

’She came to our attic after that with her mother; they came to see my old master, and she was pleased to see the snowdrops.  She told me that day, that if I would only say her prayer I should be sure to go to Home, Sweet Home.

’Very soon after this my old master died, and on the very day that I was following him to the grave I saw my poor little friend, your mother, Jack, in a funeral coach, following her mother to the same place.  Then after that she went abroad, but she did not forget the poor organ boy.  She told her father about me, and he sent money for my education, and had me trained to be a city missionary in the east of London, to work amongst the very people amongst whom I had lived.  All I am now I owe to your grandfather.

’I did not meet your mother after this for many years, not until she was married to the clergyman in whose parish I worked.