As we sit here and sip our tea—for I am invited to tea with the committee—and are waited on by three neat and pretty modest little women—one of them, a girl of eight, so full of child-like grace and simplicity, that there would be some danger of her being spoiled if she were not quite used to a little petting—who can help looking at the inmates now assembling quite quietly at the other end of the room, and thinking that in some {133} of those faces "their angels," long invisible because of neglect and wrong, are once more looking through, calm, happy, and with a hope that maketh not ashamed. Do you see that still rather sullen-looking girl of thirteen. She came here an incorrigible young thief—her father, a tanner's labourer, and out at work from five in the morning—her mother bedridden—her home was the streets—her companions a gang of juvenile thieves such as haunt Bermondsey, and make an offshoot of the population of a place till recently called "Little Hell." That girl, aged ten, was sent out to beg and to sing songs, and was an adept in the art of pretending to have lost money. There is the daughter of a crossing-sweeper, who cut his throat, and yonder a child of nine, driven from home, and charged with stealing, as her sister also is, in another Refuge; and close by are two girls, also sisters, who were found fatherless and destitute, wandering about famishing and homeless, except for a wretched room, with nothing in it but two heaps of foul straw. I need not multiply cases: and but for the known power of love and true human interest, in which the very Divine love is incarnated, you would wonder where some of these children obtained their quiet docile manner, their fearless but modest demeanour, their bright, quiet, sweet faces.