fascinated constituents. There was always some duller spirit who
could slip in and 'do the dishes,' that Mrs. Grubb might grace a
conversazione on the steps or at the gate. She was not one of those
napkin people who hide their talents, or who immure their lights
under superincumbent bushels. Whatever was hers was everybody's, for
she dispensed her favours with a liberal hand. She would never have
permitted a child to suffer for lack of food or bed, for she was not
at heart an unkind woman. You could see that by looking at her
vague, soft brown eyes,--eyes that never saw practical duties
straight in front of them,--liquid, star-gazing, vision-seeing eyes,
that could never be focussed on any near object, such as a twin or a
cooking-stove. Individuals never interested her; she cared for
nothing but humanity, and humanity writ very large at that, so that
once the twins nearly died of scarlatina while Mrs. Grubb was
collecting money for the children of the yellow-fever sufferers in
the South.

But Providence had an eye for Mr. Grubb's perplexities. It does not
and cannot always happen, in a world like this, that vice is assisted
to shirk, and virtue aideth to do, its duty; but any man as
marvellously afflicted as Mr. Grubb is likely to receive not only
spiritual consolation, but miraculous aid of some sort. The
spectacle of the worthy creature as he gave the reluctant twins their
occasional bath, and fed them on food regularly prescribed by Mrs.
Grubb, and almost as regularly rejected by them, would have melted
the stoniest heart. And who was the angel of deliverance? A little
vacant-eyed, half-foolish, almost inarticulate child, whose feeble
and sickly mother was dragging out a death-in-life existence in a
street near by. The child saw Mr. Grubb wheeling the twins in a
double perambulator: followed them home; came again, and then again,