ly.

"Harm?" repeated Mrs. Bartholomew. "Is it _your_ business to take all
sick New York and all poor New York on your hands, and send them to
watering places?"

"One poor little child?" said David.

"No matter; what's the use of sending one, if you don't send the other
hundred thousand? Is it your business, David Bartholomew?"

"Hardly, mamma. But I thought the one was my business."

"There you were mistaken. There are two or three poor societies; it is
for them to look after these cases. What is the use of having poor
societies, if we are to do the work ourselves? So low! so undignified!
so degrading! just ask any minister,--ask Dr. Blandford,--what he
thinks."

"David don't care, mamma," said Judy. "David never cares what anybody
thinks."

"Very wrong, then," said Mrs. Bartholomew; "every right-feeling person
cares what other people think. How is the world to get along? David, I
don't know you any more, you are so changed."

"Yes, mamma," said David; "perhaps I am."

"Perhaps you are? Why my patience!"--

"Your patience seems to have given out, daughter," said Mrs. Lloyd.
"Come, let Davy eat his breakfast."

"He's eating it," said Judy. "Nothing will hurt David's appetite."

"I should think nursing poor folks out of tenement houses might,"
observed Mrs. Bartholomew. "It would once."

"I can't imagine, mamma," said Judy, "how we are going to live together
in future. David isn't our sort any more. Life looks dark to me."

"If it was anybody but David," said Mrs. Bartholomew, "I should say he
would grow out of it. Any other young fool would."

"Grow out of what, mamma?" David asked.

"Grow out of the notion of being an agent of the poor societies. It's
too disgusting!"

"Mamma," he said, and he said it with such an unruffled face that
Matilda was comforted, "the poor society would not have done what I did
last night. And I am not doing it for the poor societies, but for the
King Messiah. I am His agent; that's all."

"Where did you get your commission?" Norton asked.

David hesitated, and then said, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you--"

"But that's absolute nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Bartholomew.

"What, mamma?" said David, lifting his eyes to her face.

"I mean, of course, the words are not nonsense, but putting such a
meaning to them."

"What meaning do you think belongs to them, then, mamma?"

"Why," said Mrs. Bartholomew in high dudgeon, "if you are to take them
_so_, then