ow come they to exist?"

"You are too good a philosopher, Mr. Carlisle, not to know that men are
free agents, and that God leaves them the exercise of their free
agency, even though others as well as themselves suffer by it. I
suppose, if those a little above them in the social scale had lived
according to the gospel rule, this class of people never would have
existed."

"What a reformer you would make, Eleanor!"

"I should not suit you? Yes--I do not believe in any radical way of
reform but one."

"And that is, what?--counsellor."

"Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you."

"Radical enough! You must reform the reformers first, I suppose you
know."

"I know it."

"Then, hard as it is for me to believe it, you do not go to Field-Lane
by way of penance?"

"The penance would be, to make me stay away."

"Mrs. Powle will do that, unless I contrive to disturb the action of
her free agency; but I think I shall plunge into the question of
reform, Eleanor. Speaking of that, how much reformation has been
effected by these Ragged institutions?"

"Very much; and they are only as it were beginning, you must remember."

"Room for amendment still," said Mr. Carlisle. "I never saw such a
disorderly set of scholars in my life before. How do you find an
occasional somersault helps a boy's understanding of his lesson?"

"Those things were constant at first; not occasional," said Eleanor
smiling; "somersaults, and leaping over the forms, and shouts and
catcalls, and all manner of uproarious behaviour. That was before I
ever knew them. But now, think of that boy's washed face!"

"That was the most partial reformation I ever saw rejoiced in," said
Mr. Carlisle.

"It gives hope of everything else, though. You have no idea what a bond
that community of dirt is. But there are plenty of statistics, if you
want those, Mr. Carlisle. I can give you enough of them; shewing what
has been done."

"Will you shew them to me to-night?"

"To-night? it is Sunday. No, but to-morrow night, Mr. Carlisle; or any
other time."

"Eleanor, you are very strict!"

"Not at all. That is not strictness; but Sunday is too good to waste
upon statistics."

She said it somewhat playfully, with a shilling of her old arch smile,
which did not at all reassure her companion.

"Besides, Mr. Carlisle, you like strictness a great deal better than I
do. There is not a law made in our Queen's reign or administered under
her sceptre,