With the former she would sit for hours without speaking unless addressed; with the latter she was pleased and social, and grew to be interested in what interested him.

As mentioned, Mr.
Dinneford was a man of wealth and leisure, and active in many public charities.

He had come to be much concerned for the neglected and cast-off children of poor and vicious parents, thousands upon thousands of whom were going to hopeless ruin, unthought of and uncared for by Church or State, and their condition often formed the subject of his conversation as well at home as elsewhere.
Mrs.Dinneford had no sympathy with her husband in this direction.

A dirty, vicious child was an offence to her, not an object of pity, and she felt more like, spurning it with her foot than touching it with her hand.

But it was not so with Edith; she listened to her father, and became deeply interested in the poor, suffering, neglected little ones whose sad condition he could so vividly portray, for the public duties of charity to which he was giving a large part of his time made him familiar with much that was sad and terrible in human suffering and degradation.
One day Edith said to her father, "I saw a sight this morning that made me sick.