“Pray let me help in this,” said Katherine, earnestly.  “I live quite a selfish life, and I should be thankful if you will let me furnish what money you require.”

“That I shall with great thankfulness.  But, Miss Liddell, if you are anxious to find interesting work, why not come and see our Children’s Refuge and the schools connected with it?  Then there is an association for advancing small sums to workmen in time of sickness, or to redeem their tools, which is affiliated to a ladies’ visiting club, the members of which make themselves acquainted personally with the men and their families.”

“I shall be most delighted to go with you to both, but I do not think I could do any good myself.  I am so reluctant to preach to poor people, who have so much more experience, so much more real knowledge of life, than I have, merely because they are poor.”

“I do not want you to do so, but I think personal contact with the people you relieve is good both for those benefited and their benefactor.”

“I suppose it is; and those poor old people who cannot read or are blind, I am quite willing to read to them if they like it.”

“I can find plenty for you to do, Miss Liddell,” Bertie was beginning when his sister broke in with: 

“This is quite too bad, Bertie.  You know I will not have you dragging my young friends to catch all sorts of disorders in the slums.  You must be content with Miss Liddell’s money.”

“Miss Payne, I really do wish to see something of the work on which your brother is engaged, and—­forgive me if I seem obstinate—­I am resolved to help him if I can.”

The result of the conversation was that the greater portion of the contents of Miss Liddell’s purse was transferred to Bertie’s, and he left them in high spirits, having arranged to call for Katherine the next day in order to escort her to the Children’s Refuge and some other institutions in which he took an interest.

From this time for several weeks Katherine was greatly occupied in the benevolent undertakings of her new friend.  The endless need, the degradations of extreme poverty, the hopeless condition of such masses of her fellow-creatures, depressed her beyond description.  She would gladly have given to her uttermost farthing, but it would be a mere drop in the ocean of misery around.

“Even if we could supply their every want, and give each family a decent home,” she said to Bertie one evening as she walked back with him, “they would not know how to keep it or to enjoy it.  If the men, and the women too, have not the tremendous necessity to labor that they may live, they relax and become mere brutes.  We must, above all things, educate them.”

“Yes, education is certainly necessary; but the most ignorant being who has laid hold on the Rock of Ages, who has received the spirit of adoption whereby he can cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ has a means of elevation and refinement beyond all that books and art can teach,” cried Bertie, with more warmth than he usually allowed himself to show.