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"Well, and what then?" asked Hetty. Here our little street-Arab began to tell, in his own peculiar language and style, how that he went in, and found a number of ladies in an upper room with forms set, and hot tea and bread to be had as much as they could stuff for nothing; that the boys were very wild and unruly at first, but that after the chief lady had prayed they became better, and that when half-a-dozen nice little girls were brought in and had sung a hymn or two they were quite quiet and ready to listen.
Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and lent to her efforts a shrill whistling. She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace. "My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can make unlovely noises. My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle " "Orpheus." "I was about to say a street-arab," she concluded severely.
So it happened that, on the evening in question, he appeared upon the stage escorting a financier from the Metz theatre and a comique from the theatre at Angers, both waiting for an engagement. The comique, closely shaven, wrinkled, shrivelled by the heat from the footlights, looked like an old street-arab; the financier wore cloth shoes, and no linen, so far as could be seen.
On hearing this the man's voice softened, and, entering the room, he went up to a heap of straw in one corner whereon our little friend Bobby Frog the street-Arab lay. "Hallo! Bobby, wot's wrong with 'ee? You ain't used to come to grief," said the father, laying his hand on the boy's shoulder, and giving him a rough shake. Things oftentimes "are not what they seem."
And not so long ago people could remember when he was a common larrikin, reputed leader of the Cardigan Street Push, and working for old Paasch, whose shop was now empty, his business absorbed by Jonah with the ease one swallows a lozenge. And they say he began life as a street-arab, selling papers and sleeping in the gutter. Well, some people's luck was marvellous!
We have not yet realized the fulness of redemption. Of what avail is it to save one street-Arab, or one Chinaman, if a million Arabs and Chinamen remain unsaved? Redemption is a race-savior: it seizes not only the individual, but his environment, his friends, and his future state. The true minister is a reformer.
Failing to see anything that could be utilized as a receptacle, he seemed for a moment to be in despair; but presently a bright thought flashed into his mind, and was reflected in his thin, eager, street-Arab face.
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