CHAPTER XVI.
THE BUTCHER'S SHOP.
About four years previous to the time of which I am now writing, and while yet Mr.Drake was in high repute among the people of Cowlane chapel, he went to London to visit an old friend, a woman of great practical benevolence, exercised chiefly toward orphans.

Just then her thoughts and feelings were largely occupied with a lovely little girl, the chain of whose history had been severed at the last link, and lost utterly.
A poor woman in Southwark had of her own motion, partly from love to children and compassion for both them and their mothers, partly to earn her own bread with pleasure, established a sort of _creche_ in her two rooms, where mothers who had work from home could bring their children in the morning, and leave them till night.

The child had been committed to her charge day after day for some weeks.

One morning, when she brought her, the mother seemed out of health, and did not appear at night to take her home.

The next day the woman heard she was in the small-pox-hospital.