about it, and then week by week, they began saving up, and the nearer
they came to having £3, the more real those little grandchildren of
theirs became. The daughter, you see, wasn't to be told till all was
ready, and then there was going to be a grand surprise. Well, you know,
I got as interested in that saving-up as though it was me that was going
the excursion!

"Now Joe, he had the young men's class in the Sunday-school (all of 'em
who weren't too high up in world to be taught by the sweep), and one day
I was looking in at a foundry as I passed, when a young man who was
standing out at the door said to me, 'Have you heard about Joe?'

"'No!' I said, rather startled, for he's a frail old man at the best,
'What about him?'

"'Oh, it's nothing wrong with himself,' he said, 'but a week ago when he
was going out in the early morning--last Saturday was wet, wasn't
it?--he found one of them poor street girls fallen down in a faint a few
yards away from his house. He called the missis, and they got her into
the kitchen and gave her a cup of tea and put her to bed, and she'll
never get up again, it seems. She was in a consumption too bad for them
to take her at the hospital, so Joe's keeping her till she wants it no
more.'

"I said good-bye to the young man and set off straight to see Joe. It
was afternoon, so he was in when I got there. He didn't say much, but we
went in to see the girl (she'd got the bed, and the missis slept on the
sofa and Joe in the armchair), a poor, breathless, young thing, very
near to death. I began to talk to her of the love of our Saviour, but
she stopped me. 'Nobody's ever loved _me_!' she said, 'nobody'll care if