'Not he,' said the other laconically. 'Knows better. Most of 'em as
comes down 'ere stuffs all they have to say as full of goody-goody as an
egg's full of meat. If he wur that sort you wouldn't catch _me_ here.
Never heard him say anything in the "dear brethren" sort of style, and
I've been 'ere most o' these evenings and to his lectures besides.'

'Perhaps he's one of your d--d sly ones,' said the first speaker
dubiously. 'Means to shovel it in by and by.'

'Well, I don't know as I couldn't stand it if he did,' returned his
companion. 'He'd let other fellers have their say, anyhow.'

Flaxman looked curiously at the speaker. He was a young man, a
gasfitter--to judge by the contents of the basket he seemed to have
brought in with him on his way from work--with eyes like live birds',
and small emaciated features. During the story Flaxman had noticed the
man's thin begrimed hand, as it rested on the bench in front of him,
trembling with excitement.

Another project of Robert's, started as soon as he had felt his way a
little in the district, was the scientific Sunday school. This was the
direct result of a paragraph in Huxley's Lay Sermons, where the hint of
such a school was first thrown out. However, since the introduction of
science teaching into the Board schools, the novelty and necessity of
such a supplement to a child's ordinary education is not what it was.
Robert set it up mainly for the sake of drawing the boys out of the
streets in the afternoons, and providing them with some other food for
fancy and delight than larking and smoking and penny dreadfuls. A little
simple chemical and electrical experiment went down greatly; so did a
botany class, to which Elsmere would come armed with two stores of
flowers, one to be picked to pieces, the other to be distributed
according to memory and attention. A year before he had had a number of
large coloured plates of tropical fruit and flowers prepared for him by
a Kew assistant. These he would often set up on a large screen, or put
up on the walls, till the dingy schoolroom became a bower of superb
blossom and luxuriant leaf, a glow of red and purple and orange. And
then--still by the help of pictures--he would take his class on a tour
through strange lands, talking to them of China or Egypt or South
America, till they followed him up the Amazon, or into the pyramids or
through the Pampas, or into the mysterious buried cities of Mexico, as
the children of Hamelin follow