know existed.

She looked about her in dismay as she stepped down from the car, and
during the short rapid walk that followed, had all she could do to
rescue her silken robes from contact with awful filth, and to keep her
dainty handkerchief applied to her poor little nose. Rapidly and
silently they made their way to a long, high building, whose filthy
outside stairs they descended and found themselves in a cellar the like
of which Flossy had never dreamed of.

A dreadful pile of straw covered over by a tattered and horribly dirty
rag that had once been a quilt, on this bed lay a child not yet ten
years old, whose deathly pale face and glassy eyes told the story of
hopeless sickness. No pillow on which to lay the poor little head with
its tangled masses of yellow hair, nothing anywhere that told of care
bestowed or necessary wants attended to. Over in another corner on
another filthy heap of straw and rags, lay the mother, sick too; with
the same absence of anything like decency in everything that pertained
to her.

Utter dismay seized upon Flossy. Could it be possible that human beings,
beings with souls, for whose souls her blessed Saviour died, were left
to such awful desolation of poverty as this! Mr. Roberts promptly turned
upside down an old tub that was used to doing duty as a chair, and
seated her thereon, while he went forward to the woman.

"Have you had your dinner to-day?" was the first question he asked.

"Yes, I have; and thank you kindly, too," she added gratefully. "The
woman took the money and bought meat as you told her, and made a broth,
and I and the little girl had some; it was good. The little girl took
quite a few spoonfuls of it and said it tasted good; it did me more good
to hear her say that, than it did to eat mine," the poor mother said,
and a wistful motherly look went over to the heap of rags in the corner.

"I am glad that she could eat it," he said simply. Then he further told
that he had been arranging for some things to be brought to make both
of them more comfortable; they would be here soon, could the woman who
made the broth come in and attend to them?

The sick woman shook her head. She was gone for the day: would not be
back till dark, then would have to get her children's supper, and do her
washing that very night. "She's _awful_ poor," the woman added with a
heavy sigh. "We are all of us that; if I could get up again, I could do
something for my little girl I most know I c