Chapter 17 - Page 2

from the metropolis was in a state of
ignorance with regard to such subjects that would have surprised her in
any cottage child among the poor she was accustomed to visit in the
neighbourhood. The names of the Creator and of the Saviour were certainly
familiar to Fan; from her earliest childhood she had heard them spoken
with frequency in her old Moon Street home. But that was all. Her mother
had taught her nothing--not even to lisp, when she was small, the
childish rhyme:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Her Scripture lessons at the Board School had powerfully impressed her,
but in a confused and unpleasant way. Certain portions of the historical
narrative affected her with their picturesque grandeur, and fragments
remained in her memory; the Bible and religion generally came to be
associated in her mind with dire wrath, and war, and the shedding of
blood, with ruin of cities and tribulations without end. It was
processional--a great confused host covered with clouds of dust, shields
and spears, and brass and scarlet, and noise of chariot-wheels and
blowing of trumpets--an awful pageant fascinating and terrifying to
contemplate. And when she stood still, a little frightened, to see a
horde of Salvationists surge past her in the street, with discordant
shouting and singing, waving of red flags and loud braying of brass
instruments, this seemed to her a kind of solemn representation of those
ancient and confused doings she had read about; beyond that it had no
meaning. Before her mother's death she had sometimes gone to St.
Michael's Church on wet or cold or foggy winter evenings; for in better
weather it was always overcrowded, and the vergers--a kind of mitigated
policemen, Fan thought them--would hunt her away from the door. For in
those days she was so ragged and such a sad-looking object, and they
doubtless knew very well what motive she had in going there. She had gone
there only because it was warm and dry, and the decorations and
vestments, the singing and the incense, were sweet to her senses; but
what she had heard had not enlightened her.

Mrs. Churton sighed. How unutterably sad it seemed to her that this girl,
so lovely in her person, so sweet in disposition, with so pure and saint-
like an expression, should be in this dark and heathenish condition! But
there was infinite comfort in the thought that this precious soul to be
saved had fallen into her hands, and not into those of some worldling
like Miss Starbrow herself, or, worse still, of a downright freethinker
like her own daughter. After having made her first survey of Fan's mind,
finding nothing there except that queer farrago of Scripture lessons
which had never been explained to her, and were