She had been born with a capacity for helping lame dogs over stiles;
accordingly, her pathway, from a very early age, had been bestrewn
with stiles, and processions of lame dogs ever limping towards them.
Her vocation had called her so imperiously that disobedience was
impossible. It is all very well if a certain work asks one in a
quiet and courteous manner to come and do it, when one has time and
inclination; but it is quite another matter if it coaxes one so
insistently that one can do nothing else properly, and so succumbs
finally to the persuasive voice. Still, the world must be mothered
somehow, and there are plenty of women who lack the time or the
strength, the gift or the desire, the love or the patience, to do
their share. This gap seems to be filled now and then by some
inspired little creature like Mistress Mary, with enough potential
maternity to mother an orphan asylum; too busy, too absorbed, too
radiantly absent-minded to see a husband in any man, but claiming
every child in the universe as her very own. There was never
anywhere an urchin so dirty, so ragged, so naughty, that it could not
climb into Mistress Mary's lap, and from thence into her heart. The
neophytes partook of her zeal in greater or less degree, and,
forsaking all probability of lovers (though every one of them was
young and pretty), they tied on their white aprons and clave only
unto her. Daily intercourse with a couple of hundred little street
Arabs furnished a field for the practice of considerable feminine
virtue, and in reality the woman's kingdom at the top of the broad
wooden steps was a great 'culture engine' of spiritual motherhood.

It certainly was a very merry place, and if its presiding geniuses
were engaged in conscious philanthropy, the blighting hallmark was
conspicuous by its absence. Peals of laughter rang through the
rooms; smiling faces leaned from the upstairs windows, bowing