y-School, a
Sewing-Class, a Mutual Labour Loan Society, a Shelter for Homeless
Girls, a library, an Invalid Children's Dinner, a bath-room and
lavatory, a Flower Mission, and--hear it, ye who fancy that a penny
stands very low in the scale of financial littleness--a Farthing Bank!
All this free--conducted by an unpaid band of considerably over a
hundred Christian workers, male and female--and leavening the
foundations of society, without which, and similar missions, there would
be very few leavening influences at all, and the superstructure of
society would stand a pretty fair chance of being burst up or blown to
atoms--though the superstructure is not very willing to believe the
fact!

In addition to all this, Sir Richard learned, to his great amazement,
that the Jews won't light their fires on the Sabbath-day--that is, on
our Saturday--that they won't even poke it, and that this abstinence is
the immediate cause of a source of revenue to the un-Jewish poor, whom
the Jews hire to light and poke their fires for them.

And, lastly, Sir Richard Brandon learned that Mr George Holland, who
had managed that mission for more than quarter of a century, was
resolved, in the strength of the Lord, to seek out the lost and rescue
the perishing, even though he, Sir Richard, and all who resembled him,
should refuse to aid by tongue or hand in the glorious work of rescuing
the poor from sin and its consequences.

CHAPTER TEN.

BALLS, BOBBY, SIR RICHARD, AND GILES APPEAR ON THE STAGE.

As from the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step, so, from the
dining-room to the kitchen there is but a stair. Let us descend the
stair and learn that while Sir Richard was expounding the subject of
"the poor" to little Di, Mr Balls, the butler, was engaged on the same
subject in the servants' hall.

"I cannot tell you," said Balls, "what a impression the sight o' these
poor people made on me."

"La! Mr Balls," said the cook, who was not unacquainted with low life
in London, having herself been born within sound of Bow-Bells, "you've
got no occasion to worrit yourself about it. It 'as never bin
different."

"That makes it all the worse, cook," returned Balls, standing with his
back to the fireplace and his legs wide apart; "if it was only a
temporary depression in trade, or the repeal of the corn laws that did
it, one could stand it, but to think that such a state of things
_always_ goes on is something fearful. You know I'm