“A teacher of tatterdemalions!  It isn’t an inviting field of labor.”

“No, to a refined man it must be repulsive.  Nothing but the idea of doing good would make it a pleasure or even endurable.”

“I confess myself utterly without any such motive.  I hate poor people, and ragged children, and sick women, the forlorn wives of drunken brutes.  I shut my eyes to all such odious sights.  They say, in a hotel you must never go into the kitchen, if you would keep your appetite; and I am sure one must avoid these wretches in the cellar, if he would have a cheerful view of life in his attic.”

“You are not so hard-hearted as you would have me believe.  Somebody must relieve their distresses.”

“Somebody, too, must cut off legs, and sew up spouting arteries, and extirpate cancers.  Ugh! but I shan’t.  I leave such jobs to the doctors, whose ears are familiar with shrieks, and whose appetites are not disturbed by the sight of blood.”

“So the Levite left the wounded man by the wayside, in disgust at his bruises:  but still the good Samaritan who helped him hadn’t a doctor’s degree.”

“Oh, I know.  You have me, I acknowledge.  But I can’t change my temper, and I shrink from suffering as from death.  I would rather bear it than see it.  Society always provides its good Samaritans; and you are one of them.  Don’t look modest.  I went once through some of those damnable alleys near Half-Moon Court, the agreeable place where you spend so much of your leisure.  I was looking for a subject to paint.  For curiosity, I asked an urchin if he knew you.  He flung his ragged cap twenty feet into the air, turned a somerset, and came up smiling as well as he could through the dirt,—­’Don’t I, though?  He brung us meal an’ ’taters when dad broke his leg, and he fetched oranges in his pocket when marm had the fevers.  He’s one of ’em, he is.’—­Don’t interrupt me.—­An old woman, whom I asked, said, ’Do I know Mister ’Olworthy?  A blissed saint in the flesh; my poor ol’ bones would ’ave hached many a cold night but for the blankets he brought me.  God in ’eaven reward ‘im for that same!’ I spare you the rest of the answers.  Oh, you are a saint, without robe or wings.”

“Hadn’t we better come back to the subject,” said Mr. Holworthy, in a mild voice.  “We shan’t aid your friend in this way.”

“Right, my considerate Mentor.  But talk is tempting.  I believe I should forget my errand and let a friend hang, if I got into an argument with the Governor while he was filling out the pardon.”

“I hope the gentleman you speak of is not so much afraid of contact with what is disagreeable as you are?”

“Perhaps not; he has an artistic temperament, and therefore loves what is comely; but he would go through fire to what he thought his duty.”

“And wouldn’t you?”

“What a question!  Go through fire?  No, I should bawl for the engine.”

“It’s plain, then, that he will answer better than you for the place.”