The
best was that she understood how and when such help could be
afforded. To native practicality and prudence she added a keen
recollection of the wants and difficulties she had struggled through
in childhood; there was no danger of her being foolishly lavish in
charity, when she could foresee with sympathy all the evil results
which would ensue. Her only temptation to imprudence was when, as so
often happened, she saw some little girl in a position which
reminded her strongly of her own dark days; all such she would have
liked to take home with her and somehow provide for, saving them
from the wretched alternatives which were all that life had to offer
them. So, little by little, she was brought to think in a broader
way of problems puzzling enough to wiser heads than hers. Social
miseries, which she had previously regarded as mere matters of fact,
having never enjoyed the opportunities of comparison which alone can
present them in any other light, began to move her to indignation.
Often it was with a keen sense of shame that she took the weekly
rent, a sum scraped together Heaven knew how, representing so much
deduction from the food of the family. She knew that it would be
impossible to remit the rent altogether, but at all events there was
the power of reducing it, and this she did in many cases.
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