know you, but advised us to try the _Cheshire Cheese_, where I
asked for the editor, and this caused another delay. But a gentleman
there drinkin' whisky-and-water said he'd heard of you in connection with
the _Christian World_, and the _Christian World_ gave us over to a
policeman, who brought us here; and now the question is, what would you
advise?"

"I should advise," said Mr. Joshua, pulling out his watch, "your coming
off to lunch with me."

"You're a practical man, I see," said Mrs. Purchase, "and I say again 'tis
a pity you never married. We'll leave the whole affair in your hands."

In his published writings Mr. Joshua had often descanted on the power of
the Fourth Estate; and in his addresses to young aspirants he ever laid
stress on the crucial faculty of sifting out the essentials, whether in
narrative or argument, from whatever was of secondary importance,
circumstantial, or irrelevant. The confidence and accuracy with which
Mrs. Purchase challenged him to put his faith and his method into instant
practice, staggered him not a little. He felt himself hit, so to speak,
with both barrels.

It will be allowed that he rose to the test admirably. Under an arch of
the railway bridge at the foot of Ludgate Hill there is a restaurant where
you may eat and drink and hear all the while the trains rumbling over your
head. To this he led the party; and while Mrs. Purchase talked, he sifted
out with professional skill the main points of her story, and discovered
what she required of him. To be sure, the Power of the Press remained to
be vindicated, and as yet he was far from seeing his way clear. The woman
required him to storm the doors of an orphanage and rescue without parley
the body of a child consigned to it by a legal guardian (which was
absurd); or if not instantly successful, to cow the officials with threats
of exposure (which again was absurd; since, for aught he knew, the
institution thoroughly deserved the subscriptions of the public).

Yet while his own heart sank, the confidence of his guests, and their
belief in him, sensibly increased. He had chosen this particular
restaurant not deliberately, but with the instinct of a born journalist;
for it is the first secret of journalism to appear to be moving at high
speed even when standing absolutely still, and here in the purlieus of the
clanging station, amid the thunder of trains and the rush of hundreds of
feet to bookstalls and ticket-office