The first result of this was that that lady invited by letter all the gentlemen’s boys whom she knew, and Margaret and Tom had a drawing-room meeting of a different kind. They were boys such as Arnold would have loved and Thring believed in—sons, for the most part, of Christian parents, fine specimens of young England, the statesmen and merchants and professional men of the future. And these boys, full of fun and ready for mischief, but generous and manly, hating lies and cowardice as only English boys can, became the nucleus of a grand army destined to save the nation and lift it into a glory such as it had never known before. Margaret’s gentle voice and beautiful face won their way immediately to the boys’ hearts. She told the same story as before, but in different words and with a different significance, leaving them to see how they might help those who were down to rise; and that their education and position put upon them the responsibility of doing so. Next, in glowing terms she reminded them of the old Crusaders, and the Knights of Chivalry, and besought these modern boys of England to enter upon the new crusade, and drive out from their native land the drunkenness and gambling, the impurity and misery which were crowding round its holy places. She reminded them that _they_ must bring about the great reformation; that _they_ must acknowledge Christ, and for His sake the brotherhood of man; it would be _their_ sin and shame if poor women were still to work for starvation wages, and wretched men lose their manliness because they had lost their hope. She took it for granted, she said, that they were Christian boys, and that they would be true to the faith of their fathers, which faith was not simply a belief in Christ as a Saviour, though it was that first of all, but an obedience to Christ as a law-giver, and that the command to love one another, to care for the poor, to acknowledge the equality of man, to be strictly fair and honourable, were simple everyday duties incumbent upon all who bore the name of Christ. She spoke of the waste of God-given power in war, and urged them in glowing words to pledge themselves never to uphold those who pressed a national quarrel to murder; and she asked them, now in their youth, and afterwards in their manhood, to suspend for a while even the strife of political parties until the wrongs of the poor and the ignorant were righted; and to accomplish a grand mastery of self that they might become the masters of the world. And then she bade them win the love and reverence of women by being such brave, high-minded, clean-souled men as they dreamed all Englishmen should be.