He was in Wedgewood Street at a few minutes before eight on the following evening. The sky above Lambeth was no longer obscured; there were wintry stars shining over that forest of chimney pots and everlasting monotony of slated roofs; and even Lambeth looked lively with its costers’ barrows and bustle of eventide marketing. Theodore found the door open, as it had been yesterday, and he found an extra lamp upon the first floor landing, and the door of Miss Newton’s room ajar, while from within came the sound of many voices, moderated to a subdued tone, but still lively. His modest knock was answered by Miss Newton herself, who was standing close to the door, ready to greet every fresh arrival. “How do you do? We are nearly all here,” she said, cheerily. “I hope you have not just been dining, for with us tea means a hearty meal, and if you can’t eat anything we shall feel as if you were Banquo’s ghost. How do you do, Mrs. Kirby?” to another arrival. “Baby better, I hope? Yes, that’s right. How are you, Clara? and you, Rose? You’ve had that wretched tooth out—I can see it in your face. Such a relief, isn’t it? So glad to see you, Susan Dale, and you, Maria, and you, Jenny. Why, we are all here, I do believe.” “Yes, Miss Newton,” said a bright-looking girl by the fireplace, who had been making toast indefatigably for twenty minutes, and whose complexion had suffered accordingly. “There are two and twenty of us, four and twenty, counting the gentleman and you. I think that’s as many as you expected.” “Yes, everybody’s here. So we may as well begin tea.” In most such assemblies, where the intention was to benefit a humble class of guests, the proceedings would have begun with a hymn; but at Miss Newton’s parties there were neither hymns nor prayers—and yet Miss Newton loved her hymn-book, and delighted in the pathos and the sweetness of the music with which those familiar words are interwoven; nor would she yield to anybody in her belief in the efficacy of prayer; but she had made up her mind from the beginning that her tea-parties were to be pure and simple recreation, and that any good which should come out of them was to come incidentally. The women and girls who came at her bidding were to feel they came to be entertained, came as her guests, just as, had they been duchesses, they might have gone to visit other duchesses in Park Lane or Carlton Gardens. They were not asked in order that they should be taught, or preached to, or wheedled into the praying of prayers or the singing of hymns. They went as equals to visit a friend who relished their society.