, and who
had a great idea of his own social powers, was somewhat grudging and
ungracious through it all. But Elsmere's proposals were much too good
to be refused. He offered to bring to the undertaking his time, his
clergyman's experience, and as much money as might be wanted. Wardlaw
listened to him cautiously for an hour, took stock of the whole man
physically and morally, and finally said, as he very quietly and
deliberately knocked the ashes out of his pipe,--

'All right, I'm your man, Mr. Elsmere. If Mackay agrees, I vote we make
you captain of this venture.'

'Nothing of the sort,' said Elsmere. 'In London I am a novice; I come to
learn, not to lead.'

Wardlaw shook his head with a little shrewd smile. Mackay faintly
endorsed his companion's offer, and the party broke up.

That was in January. In two months from that time, by the natural force
of things, Elsmere, in spite of diffidence and his own most sincere wish
to avoid a premature leadership, had become the head and heart of
the Elgood Street undertaking, which had already assumed much larger
proportions. Wardlaw was giving him silent approval and invaluable
help, while young Mackay was in the first uncomfortable stages of a
hero-worship which promised to be exceedingly good for him.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

There were one or two curious points connected with the beginnings of
Elsmere's venture in North R---- one of which may just be noticed here.
Wardlaw, his predecessor and colleague, had speculatively little or
nothing in common with Elsmere or Murray Edwardes. He was a devoted
and Orthodox Comtist, for whom Edwardes had provided an outlet for
the philanthropic passion, as he had for many others belonging to far
stranger and remoter faiths.

By profession, he was a barrister, with a small and struggling practice.
On ibis practice, however, he had married, and his wife, who had been a
doctor's daughter and a national schoolmistress, had the same ardors as
himself. They lived in one of the dismal little squares near the Goswell
Road, and had two children. The wife, as a Positivist mother is bound to
do, tended and taught her children entirely herself. She might have been
seen any day wheeling their perambulator through the dreary streets of a
dreary region; she was their Providence, their deity, the representative
to them of all tenderness and all authority. But when her work with them
was done, she would throw herself into charity organization cases