hn returned to the outspread plan--'_this_, you see,
obviates the difficulty you raised.'

'Yes, it's a great improvement,' Miss Levering agreed.

Mrs. Heriot, joining in for the first time, spoke with emphasis--

'But it's going to cost a great deal more.'

'It's worth it,' said Miss Levering.

'But we'll have nothing left for the organ at St. Pilgrim's.'

'My dear Lydia,' said Lady John, 'we're putting the organ aside.'

'We can't afford to "put aside" the elevating influence of music.' Mrs.
Heriot spoke with some asperity.

'What we must make for, first, is the cheap and humanely conducted
lodging-house.'

'There are several of those already; but poor St. Pilgrim's----'

'There are none for the poorest women,' said Miss Levering.

'No; even the excellent Barlow was for multiplying Rowton Houses. You
can never get men to realize--you can't always get women----'

'It's the work least able to wait,' said Miss Levering.

'I don't agree with you,' Mrs. Heriot bridled, 'and I happen to have
spent a great deal of my life in works of charity.'

'Ah, then,'--Miss Levering lifted her eyes from the map to Mrs. Heriot's
face--'you'll be interested in the girl I saw dying in a tramp ward a
little while ago. _Glad_ her cough was worse, only she mustn't die
before her father. Two reasons. Nobody but her to keep the old man out
of the workhouse, and "father is so proud." If she died first, he would
starve--worst of all, he might hear what had happened up in London to
his girl.'

With an air of profound suspicion, Mrs. Heriot interrupted--

'She didn't say, I suppose, how she happened to fall so low?'

'Yes, she did. She had been in service. She lost the train back one
Sunday night, and was too terrified of her employer to dare to ring him
up after hours. The wrong person found her crying on the platform.'

'She should have gone to one of the Friendly Societies.'

'At eleven at night?'

'And there are the Rescue Leagues. I myself have been connected with one
for twenty years----'

'Twenty years!' echoed Miss Levering. 'Always arriving "after the
train's gone,"--after the girl and the wrong person have got to the
journey's end.'

Mrs. Heriot's eyes flashed, but before she could speak Jean asked--

'Where is she now?'

'Never mind.' Lady John turned again to the plan.

'Two nights ago she was waiting at a street corner in the rain.

'Near a public-house, I suppose?' Mrs. Heriot threw in.

'Yes; a sort o