“What about those you cannot help?” Joseph persisted. “Like the child with the cholera infantum? Her mother brought her in too late. The infant was practically dead when she arrived.”

“Do you mean the child Mercy brought to us?”

“She’s too young to be a mother.” Joseph couldn’t contain his exasperation. “At her age, she ought not to have any children, since she clearly has no idea how to take care of them.”

Joseph didn’t agree with every philosophy his friends espoused regarding the poor, particularly blunt statements such as “If they cannot feed, they should not breed.” Perhaps he didn’t go quite so far as to think the poor should stop having babies, but after the neglect he’d witnessed time and again during his work at the dispensary, he was beginning to think that at the very least, poor women needed to be educated on how to take care of their young.

“Mercy wasn’t the child’s mother.” Bates took off his spectacles and wiped them with the edge of his waistcoat. “My guess is the mother was at work or perhaps sick herself so that she was unable to bring the child. And Mercy, seeing the child in need, rushed her here hoping to save her.”

Joseph envisioned the young woman bending over the dead child, her delicate features taut with agony, her eyes swelling with grief. Pretty eyes, he remembered thinking, especially their blue-green color. “You must be mistaken. She was the infant’s mother—”

“Mercy comes in all the time with one child or another. She’s an angel of mercy in that community, though she doesn’t know it.” Bates chuckled softly. “Her name certainly befits her.”

Again, Joseph pictured the woman as she’d finally stood. She’d surprised Joseph by bending over and unlacing her boot. “Thank ye for trying, sir,” she said in a broken voice. “I’m very much obliged to you.” She then tugged her sockless foot out of the boot and held it out to him. “Will you take my boots as payment, sir? It’s all I’ve got.”

Joseph had tried not to recoil at the prospect of touching the filthy excuse for a shoe, much less the idea of allowing the woman to walk the London streets barefoot. Of course, he’d insisted she keep her boots, that he required no payment. He figured she would need every penny she could find to pay the undertaker for a coffin and a proper burial.

“Mercy is doing her part to make a difference,” Bates continued. “Now, imagine if everyone did that—took a small part in reaching out. Then imagine if all those small parts were added together. We’d be able to accomplish a great deal of good.”