n ain't much better than heathens,
leastways as to most things that matter. They haven't got a sensible
religion, not one that gets down into what they do. The parson doesn't
reach them--he talks about church and the sacraments, and they don't get
at what good it's going to do them. And the chapel preachers ain't much
better. They talk and sing and pray, when what the people want is light,
and hot water, and soap, and being shown how to live, and how to
bring up children healthy and strong, and decent-cooked food. I'd have
food-hospitals if I could, and I'd give the children in the schools one
good meal a day. I'm sure the children of the poor go wrong and bad
more through the way they live than anything. If only they was taught
right--not as though they was paupers! Give me enough nurses of the
right sort, and enough good, plain cooks, and meat three times a week,
and milk and bread and rice and porridge every day, and I'd make a new
place of any town in England in a year. I'd--"

She stopped all at once, however, and flushing, said: "I didn't stop to
think I was talking to you, sir."

"I am glad you speak to me so," he answered gently. "You and I are both
reformers at heart."

"Me? I've done nothing, sir, not any good to anybody or anything."

"Not to Jasper Kimber?"

"You did that, sir; he says so; he says you made him."

A quick laugh passed David's lips. "Men are not made so easily. I think
I know the trowel and the mortar that built that wall! Thee will marry
him, friend?"

Her eyes burned as she looked at him. She had been eternally
dispossessed of what every woman has the right to have--one memory
possessing the elements of beauty. Even if it remain but for the moment,
yet that moment is hers by right of her sex, which is denied the
wider rights of those they love and serve. She had tasted the cup of
bitterness and drunk of the waters of sacrifice. Married life had no
lure for her. She wanted none of it. The seed of service had, however,
taken root in a nature full of fire and light and power, undisciplined
and undeveloped as it was. She wished to do something--the spirit of
toil, the first habit of the life of the poor, the natural medium for
the good that may be in them, had possession of her.

This man was to her the symbol of work. To have cared for his home, to
have looked after his daily needs, to have sheltered him humbly from
little things, would have been her one true happiness. And this was
d