The "imp woman" was quite a different style of person. She was of middle age, and had three miserable little children dependent upon her, as her husband had absconded. These, with several others whom she borrowed as business required, provided a good living, as she supplied several of the low theatres with imp children, used in pantomimes and plays to represent huge frogs, cats, and other animals, also angels and goblins. She was a large consumer of gin; and it was well known that she gave abundance to her children, to stop their growth, as they decreased in value as they increased in size. Employers at the theatres used to come to fit the skins and to instruct the children in their duties. These were of the most ludicrous kind, and her boy of six did the monkey so well that for two Christmas seasons he earned a pound a week. This training in the skins was painful until the children got "into shape" as it was called. One afternoon the Missionary approached the door, which was partly open, and was startled by the stifled sobbing of the youngest,--a tiny girl of not quite five years. Upon entering the room he saw that the sobs proceeded from a blue fiend, which was wagging its forked tail and shaking its bat-wings upon the table, the woman standing over the creature with a cane. "This is shameful," he exclaimed, taking the fiend into his arms; and then he burst the cord, and set the child free. He then turned toward the mother and said severely, "This case was made for the child last year, and if your cruelty in forcing her to move in it was known, you would have six months' hard labour. As this Book says, you must be without natural affection, and it would be better for you all to go into the workhouse, or to beg your bread, than to live in this way." "You ain't got no business to come here!" exclaimed the woman in a rage. "And she's a hobstinate hussey, she is; and as for natural affection, there's men better than you as knows as the Bible keeps us down and ain't true. And I does love my children, and I must get a living for 'em, sitewated as I am." The child trembled, and threw her arms round the neck of her deliverer. To calm them both he said quietly: "You know very well that I am everybody's friend, and I can't help caring for your little children. When the Saviour was on earth He blessed little dears like this, and we who know the Bible to be true must love and care for them."