His eyes told her that he was about to return to the one subject that she dreaded. She tried--as women will try, in the little emergencies of their lives--to gain time.
"I am interested about your Home," she said: "I want to know what sort of place it is. Is the discipline very severe?"
"There is no disciplined," he answered warmly. "My one object is to be a friend to my friendless fellow-creatures; and my one way of governing them is to follow the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. Whatever else I may remind them of, when they come to me, I am determined not to remind them of a prison. For this reason--though I pity the hardened wanderers of the streets, I don't open my doors to them. Many a refuge, in which discipline is inevitable, is open to these poor sinners already. My welcome is offered to penitents and sufferers of another kind--who have fallen from positions in life, in which the sense of honor has been cultivated; whose despair is associated with remembrances which I may so encourage, with the New Testament to help me, as to lead them back to the religious influences under which their purer and happier lives may have been passed. Here and there I meet with disappointments. But I persist in my system of trusting them as freely as if they were my own children; and, for the most part, they justify my confidence in them. On the day--if it ever comes--when I find discipline necessary, I shall suffer my disappointment and close my doors."