t not babies, and you sha'n't
have Jenny."

"Think, my dear niece, before you refuse," Miss Horner remonstrated.
"Think before you condemn your child to everlasting damnation, for
nothing but the gates of Hell can come from denying the Heavenly Will.
Think of your child growing up in wickedness and idle places, growing
old in ignorance and contempt of God. Think of her dancing along the
broad ways of Beelzebub, eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree,
kissing and waltzing and making love and theater-going and riding
outside omnibuses. Think of her journeying from vanity unto vanity and
becoming a prey to evil and lascivious men. Remember the wily serpent
who is waiting for her. Give her to us, that she may be washed in the
blood of the Lamb, and crying Hallelujah, may have a harp in the Kingdom
of Heaven.

"If you reject us," the old lady went on, her marble face taking on the
lively hues of passion, her eyes on fire with the greatness of her
message, "you reject God. Your daughter will go by ways you know not of;
she will be lost in the mazes of destruction, she will fall in the pit
of sin. She will be trampled under foot on the Day of Judgment, and be
flung forever into wailing and gnashing of teeth. Her going out and
coming in will be perilous. Her path will be set with snares of the
giant of Iniquity. Listen to us, my dear niece, lest your child become a
daughter of pleasure, a perpetual desire to the evil-minded. Give her us
that we may keep her where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and no
thieves break in and steal."

The old lady, exhausted by the force of her prophecy, sank down into the
chair, and, elated by the splendors of the divine wrath, seemed indeed
to be a noble and fervid messenger from God.

In Mrs. Raeburn, however, these denunciations wakened a feeling of
resentment.

"Here," she cried, "are you cursing my Jenny?"

"We are warning you."

"Well, don't sit nodding there like three crows; your cursing will come
to nothing, because you don't know nothing about London, nor about life,
nor about nothing. What's the good of joring about the way to Heaven,
when you don't know the way to Liverpool Street without asking a
policeman? I say Jenny shall be happy. I say she shall be jolly and
merry and laugh when she's a mind to, bless her, and never come to no
harm with her mother to look after her. She sha'n't be a Plain Jane and
No Nonsense, with her hair screwed back like a broom, but she shall