'I feel more and more that I ought to make some friends,' said Falconer; 'for I find my means of help reach but a little way. What had I better do? I suppose I could get some introductions.--I hardly know how.' 'That will easily be managed. I will take that in hand. If you will accept invitations, you will soon know a good many people--of all sorts,' she added with a smile. About this time Falconer, having often felt the pressure of his ignorance of legal affairs, and reflected whether it would not add to his efficiency to rescue himself from it, began such a course of study as would fit him for the profession of the law. Gifted with splendid health, and if with a slow strength of grasping, yet with a great power of holding, he set himself to work, and regularly read for the bar. CHAPTER VIII. MY OWN ACQUAINTANCE. It was after this that my own acquaintance with Falconer commenced. I had just come out of one of the theatres in the neighbourhood of the Strand, unable to endure any longer the dreary combination of false magnanimity and real meanness, imported from Paris in the shape of a melodrama, for the delectation of the London public. I had turned northwards, and was walking up one of the streets near Covent Garden, when my attention was attracted to a woman who came out of a gin-shop, carrying a baby. She went to the kennel, and bent her head over, ill with the poisonous stuff she had been drinking. And while the woman stood in this degrading posture, the poor, white, wasted baby was looking over her shoulder with the smile of a seraph, perfectly unconscious of the hell around her. 'Children will see things as God sees them,' murmured a voice beside me. I turned and saw a tall man with whose form I had already become a little familiar, although I knew nothing of him, standing almost at my elbow, with his eyes fixed on the woman and the child, and a strange smile of tenderness about his mouth, as if he were blessing the little creature in his heart. He too saw the wonder of the show, typical of so much in the world, indeed of the world itself--the seemingly vile upholding and ministering to the life of the pure, the gracious, the fearless. Aware from his tone more than from his pronunciation that he was a fellow-countryman, I ventured to speak to him, and in a home-dialect. 'It's a wonnerfu' sicht. It's the cake o' Ezekiel ower again.' He looked at me sharply, thought a moment, and said, 'You were going my way when you stopped. I will walk with you, if you will.' 'But what's to be done about it?' I said. 'About what?' he returned. 'About the child there,' I answered. 'Oh! she is its mother,' he replied, walking on. 'What difference does that make?' I said. 'All the difference in the world. If God has given her that child, what right have you or I to interfere?' 'But I verily believe from the look of the child she gives it gin.'