‘Mr. Faulkner must be a saint,’ said Emmeline.
‘So he is,’ agreed Aunt Grace heartily; ‘but I don’t know,’ she added, with a whimsical little smile, ‘whether he’ll any more fit your idea of a saint than Fir-tree Cottage did that of a cottage.’
Aunt Grace was right. Emmeline could not help feeling a little shock of surprise when, soon after they had taken their seats in the schoolroom, a curly-haired little man, with a round, merry face, came and stood before the great white lantern-sheet, and she realised that this must be the Lecturer.
‘Why, that man’s a little boy!’ remarked Kitty, in a stage whisper.
And, indeed, there was something very boyish in his appearance. Not that they had much time to study it, for in another moment the lights were lowered, a hymn appeared on the lantern-sheet, and after it had been sung through lustily the lecture began.
The first picture shown represented a room in London—such a filthy, miserable room as the children could never even have imagined. On a ragged mattress in one corner lay a little boy, so thin that he was more like a skeleton than a child. He had been almost dying, it appeared, when he had been discovered by the Society to which the Home belonged, and rescued from death, or worse, for the room had been kept by a wicked man who was bringing up this child and a number of others to a life of crime.
The next picture was far less harrowing to the feelings of the audience, for it showed the same boy fat, and clean and comfortable after a few years spent in the beautiful Home among the Surrey hills, where Mr. Faulkner was now Chaplain. He had since joined the Royal Navy, said the clergyman, and was now learning to serve his King and country as a brave man should, instead of making a livelihood by robbery.
‘Perhaps he’ll be one of my men some day,’ whispered Micky, who had every intention of ending his life as an Admiral.
Picture followed picture, showing tragic scenes of child life in darkest London, varied from time to time by groups of prosperous children whom the Society had adopted. On the whole it was much like other lectures of its kind, but the Bolton children, who had been at nothing of the sort before, listened and gazed entranced, and felt very regretful when it was over, and a final hymn and a collection brought the proceedings to a close.