"And can you read?"

Little Boy. "Isss." "And write?"

Little Boy. "Isss."

"And have you got a sister?"

Little Boy. "Isss."

"And does she wash your face so nicely?"

Little Boy, extra solemn. "No, see is wite a little girl; see is on'y four year old."

"And how old are you?"

Little Boy, with great dignity. "I am fi' year old."

Then he told me Mrs. Willis "wassed" his face, and he brought his sister to school.

"Where is your sister?" says the mistress, going by. But four-years was not forthcoming.

"I s'pose see has walt home," says the child, and goes on with his pudding.

This little pair are orphans out of the workhouse, Mrs. K - told me. But somebody pays Mrs. Willis for their

keep.

There was another funny little thing, very small, sitting between two bigger boys, to whom I said,

"Are you a little boy or a little girl?"

"Little dirl," says this baby, quite confidently.

"No, you ain't," cries the left-hand neighbor, very much excited.

"Yes, she is," says right-hand neighbor.

And then three or four more join in, each taking a different view of the question. All this time corduroys is still grinning and making faces in his corner. I admire his brass buttons, upon which three or four more children instantly crowd round to look at them. One is a poor little deformed fellow, to whom buttons would be of very little use. He is in quite worn and ragged clothes: he looks as pale and thin almost as that poor girl I first noticed. He has no mother;

he and his brother live alone with their father, who is out all day, and the children have to do everything for themselves. The young ones here who have no mothers seem by far the worst off. This little deformed boy, poor as he is, finds something to give away. Presently I see him scrambling over the backs of the others, and feeding them with small shreds of meat, which he takes out of his soup with his grubby little fingers, and which one little boy, called Thompson, is eating with immense relish. Mrs. Khere comes up, and says that those who are hungry are to have some more. Thompson has some more, and so does another rosy little fellow; but the others have hardly finished what was first given them, and the very little ones send off their pudding half eaten, and ask for soup. The mistresses here are quite touchingly kind and thoughtful. I did not hear a sharp tone. All the children seemed at home, and happy, and gently dealt with. However cruelly want and care and harshness haunt their own homes, here at least there are only kind words and comfort for these poor little pilgrims whose toil has begun so early. Mrs. told me once, that often in winter time these children come barefooted through the snow, and so cold and hungry that they have fallen off their seats half fainting. We may be sure that such little sufferers thanks to these Good Samaritans ! will be tenderly picked up and cared for. But, I wonder, must there always be children in the world hungry and deserted? and will there never, out of all the abundance of the earth, be enough to spare to content those who want so little to make them happy?

Mrs. — came in while I was still at the school, and took me over the workshops where the elder boys learn to carpenter and carve. Scores of drawing-rooms in Belgravia are bristling with the pretty little tables and ornaments these young artificers design. A young man with a scriptural name superintends the work; the boys are paid for their

later, and send out red velvet and twisted legs, and wood ornamented in a hundred devices. There is an industrial class for girls, too. The best and oldest are taken in, and taught housework, and kitchen-work, and sewing. Even the fathers and mothers come in for a share of the good things, and are invited to tea sometimes, and amused in the evening with magic-lanterns, and conjurers, and lecturings. I do not dwell at greater length upon the industrial part of these schools, because I want to speak of another very similar institution I went to see another day.

On my way thither I had occasion to go through an old churchyard, full of graves and sunshine; a quaint old suburban place, with tree-tops and old brick houses all round about, and ancient windows looking down upon the quiet tombstones. Some children were playing among the graves, and two rosy little girls in big bonnets were sitting demurely on a stone, and grasping two babies that were placidly basking in the sun. The little girls look up and grin as I go by. I would ask them the way, only I know they won't answer, and so I go on, out at an old iron gate, with a swinging lamp, up Church Walk" (so it is written), and along a trim little terrace, to where a maid-of-all-work is scrubbing at her steps. When I ask the damsel my way to B— Street, she says she "do-ant know B Street, but there's Little Davis Street round the corner"; and when I say I'm afraid Little Davis Street is no good to me, she says, ""T ain't Gunter's Row, is it?" So I go off in despair, and after some minutes of brisk walking find myself turning up the trim little terrace again, where the maid-of-all-work is still busy at her steps. This time, as we have a sort of acquaintance, I tell her that I am looking for a house where girls are taken in, and educated, and taught to be housemaids. At which confidence she brightens up, and says, "There's a 'ouse round the-ar with somethink wrote on the door, jest where the little boy's a-trundlin' of his 'oop."

m

And so, sure enough, following the hoop, I come to an old-fashioned house in a court-yard, and ring at a wooden door, on which "Girls' Industrial Schools" is painted up in white letters.

A little industrious girl, in a lilac pinafore, let me in, with a courtesy.

"May I come in and see the place?" say I.

"Please, yes," says she (another courtesy). "Please, what name? please walk this way."

"This way" leads through the court, where clothes are hanging on lines, into a little office-room, where my guide leaves me, with yet another little courtesy. In a minute the mistress comes out from the inner room. She is a kind, smiling young woman, with a fresh face and a pleasant manner. She takes me in, and I see a dozen more girls in lilac pinafores reading round a deal table. They look mostly about thirteen or fourteen years old. I ask if this is all the school.

"No, not all," the mistress says, counting; "some are in the laundry, and some are not at home. When they are old enough, they go out into the neighborhood to help to wash, or cook, or what not. Go on, girls!" and the girls instantly begin to read again, and the mistress, opening a door, brings us out into the passage. "We have room for twenty-two," says the little mistress; "and we dress them, and feed them, and teach them as well as we can. On week-days they wear anything we can find for them, but they have very nice frocks on Sundays. I never leave them; I sit with them, and sleep among them, and walk with them; they are always friendly and affectionate to me and among themselves, and are very good companions."

In answer to my questions, she said that most of the children were put in by friends who paid half a crown a week for them, sometimes the parents themselves, but they could rarely afford it. That besides this, and what the girls

could earn, £ 200 a year is required for the rent of the house and expenses. "It has always been made up,” says the mistress," but we can't help being very anxious at times, as we have nothing certain, nor any regular subscriptions. Won't you see the laundry?" she adds, opening a door.

In the laundry is a steam, and a clatter, and irons, and linen, and a little mangle, turned by two little girls, while two or three more are busy ironing under the superintendence of a washerwoman with tucked-up sleeves; piles of shirt-collars and handkerchiefs and linen are lying on the shelves, shirts and clothes are hanging on lines across the room. The little girls don't stop, but go on busily.

"Where is Mary Anne?" says the mistress, with a little conscious pride.

"There she is, mum," says the washerwoman, and Mary Anne steps out, blushing, from behind the mangle, with a hot iron in her hand and a hanging head.

"Mary Anne is our chief laundry-maid," says the mistress, as we came out into the hall again. "For the first miserable in the

year I could make nothing of her; she was kitchen, she could n't bear house work, she would n't learn her lessons. In fact, I was quite unhappy about her, till one day I set her to ironing; she took to it instantly, and has been quite cheerful and busy ever since."

So leaving Mary Anne to her vocation in life, we went ap-stairs to the dormitories. The first floor is let to a lady, and one of the girls is chosen to wait upon her; the second floor is where they sleep, in fresh light rooms with open windows and sweet spring breezes blowing in across gardens and court-yards. The place was delightfully trim and fresh and peaceful; the little gray-coated beds stood in rows, with a basket at the foot of each, and texts were hanging up on the wall. In the next room stood a wardrobe full of the girls' Sunday clothes, of which one of them keeps the key; after this came the mistress's own room, as fresh and light and well kept as the rest.