"And now she proves a priceless helper to a class that troubles me even more than the loafers, and for which neither you nor I can do anything," said Mr. Morpeth, with a frank smile. "Those scores of young women who live sordid, useless, aimless lives, the daughters perhaps of decent, hard-working fathers. Those girls ought to be earning a livelihood, but false notions of 'shabby gentility'--shall we call it?--impels them to lounge about all day with the proverbial idle hands which the Evil One finds so handy. From poor warrens of homes they come forth bedecked in tawdry finery that they spend their lives in sticking together. Faugh, it makes one ill to see them lolling about their pandals and ogling at passers-by," Mr. Morpeth added, with a truly British shrug of his shoulders which brought a smile to Mark Cheveril's face. "It is these eyesores," he went on, "that Mrs. Fellowes and one or two like-minded helpers have tackled. Some of them don't even know how to write or add up a sum, though they are full-grown women, and their powers of reading are so lame that many among them cannot read the simplest story with ease or pleasure, though, I understand, some are great readers and devour 'yellow backs.' Mrs. Fellowes has instituted sewing classes, and we are beginning to have higher ambitions. We mean to get them bred as printers. The compositor's trade seems specially suited for women; and Mrs. Fellowes has great plans of having them properly trained as ladies' nurses, and is already trying to enlist the Medical Staff on their behalf. Then we have a little pet scheme of getting the more deft-fingered apprenticed to watchmakers and jewellers. We think they might be in requisition for the zenanas where jewellery is so all important." "But what about the young men? Is it only the women who have sunk to such a state of do-nothingness?" "Ah, it is in them my hope lies! They are my sons," said Mr. Morpeth, with an eager smile. "To make them more manly, more truthful, to make their souls--that is what I live for now! You may guess then," he added slowly, fixing his eyes on Mark, "how glad an hour struck for me this morning when you made yourself known as one brave enough to come to the rescue!" "As a humble volunteer only. But I recognise the claim, and here I am! I was going to ask you, surely there are many among the Eurasians who ought to make their way into various services? I have wondered, for instance, why they should be debarred from the army ranks?"