A poor woman in Southwark had of her own motion, partly from love to children and compassion for both them and their mothers, partly to earn her own bread with pleasure, established a sort of creche in her two rooms, where mothers who had work from home could bring their children in the morning, and leave them till night.  The child had been committed to her charge day after day for some weeks.  One morning, when she brought her, the mother seemed out of health, and did not appear at night to take her home.  The next day the woman heard she was in the small-pox-hospital.  For a week or so, the money to pay for the child came almost regularly, in postage-stamps, then ceased altogether, and the woman heard nothing either from or of the mother.  After a fortnight she contrived to go to the hospital to inquire after her.  No one corresponding to her description was in the place.  The name was a common one, and several patients bearing it had lately died and been buried, while others had recovered and were gone.  Her inquiries in the neighborhood had no better success:  no one knew her, and she did not even discover where she had lived.  She could not bear the thought of taking the child to the work-house, and kept her for six or eight weeks, but she had a sickly son, a grown lad, to support, and in dread lest she should be compelled to give her up to the parish, had applied for counsel to the lady I have mentioned.  When Mr. Drake arrived, she had for some time been searching about in vain to find a nest for her.

Since his boys had been taken from him, and the unprized girl left behind had grown so precious, Mr. Drake had learned to love children as the little ones of God.  He had no doubt, like many people, a dread of children with unknown antecedents:  who could tell what root of bitterness, beyond the common inheritance, might spring up in them?  But all that was known of this one’s mother was unusually favorable; and when his friend took him to see the child, his heart yearned after her.  He took her home to Dorothy, and she had grown up such as we have seen her, a wild, roguish, sweet, forgetful, but not disobedient child—­very dear to both the Drakes, who called her their duckling.

As we have seen, however, Mr. Drake had in his adversity grown fearful and faint-hearted, and had begun to doubt whether he had a right to keep her.  And of course he had not, if it was to be at the expense of his tradespeople.  But he was of an impetuous nature, and would not give even God time to do the thing that needed time to be done well.  He saw a crisis was at hand.  Perhaps, however, God saw a spiritual, where he saw a temporal crisis.