Ida was excellently fitted for the work she had undertaken.  She knew so well, from her own early experience, the nature of the people with whom she was brought in contact, and had that instinctive sympathy with their lives without which it is so vain to attempt practical social reform.  She started with no theory, and as yet had no very definite end in view; it simply appeared to her that, as owner of these slums, honesty and regard for her own credit required that she should make them decent human habitations, and give what other help she could to people obviously so much in need of it.  The best was that she understood how and when such help could be afforded.  To native practicality and prudence she added a keen recollection of the wants and difficulties she had struggled through in childhood; there was no danger of her being foolishly lavish in charity, when she could foresee with sympathy all the evil results which would ensue.  Her only temptation to imprudence was when, as so often happened, she saw some little girl in a position which reminded her strongly of her own dark days; all such she would have liked to take home with her and somehow provide for, saving them from the wretched alternatives which were all that life had to offer them.  So, little by little, she was brought to think in a broader way of problems puzzling enough to wiser heads than hers.  Social miseries, which she had previously regarded as mere matters of fact, having never enjoyed the opportunities of comparison which alone can present them in any other light, began to move her to indignation.  Often it was with a keen sense of shame that she took the weekly rent, a sum scraped together Heaven knew how, representing so much deduction from the food of the family.  She knew that it would be impossible to remit the rent altogether, but at all events there was the power of reducing it, and this she did in many cases.

The children she came to regard as her peculiar care.  Her strong common sense taught her that it was with these that most could be done.  The parents could not be reformed; at best they might be kept from that darkest depth of poverty which corrupts soul and body alike.  But might not the girls be somehow put into the way of earning a decent livelihood?  Ida knew so well the effect upon them of the occupations to which they mostly turned, occupations degrading to womanhood, blighting every hope.  Even to give them the means of remaining at home would not greatly help them; there they still breathed a vile atmosphere.  To remove them altogether was the only efficient way, and how could that be done?

The months of late summer and autumn saw several more garden-parties.  These, Ida knew, were very useful, but more enduring things must be devised.  Miss Hurst was the only person with whom she could consult, and that lady’s notions were not very practical.  If only she could have spoken freely with Waymark; but that she could no longer on any subject, least of all on this.  As winter set in, he had almost forsaken her.  He showed no interest in her life, beyond asking occasionally what she was reading, and taking the opportunity to talk of books.  Throughout November she neither saw him nor heard from him.  Then one evening he came.