"But we get a hold on those who live in Archer's Rents," put in Mrs. Cromer, "for they generally come back to the factory when they can."

"Poor things!" sighed Harry Cromer. "When I am eating my meals, I often wonder which morsel is paid for by the profit of Archer's Rents. You know they belong to our firm, and are mostly tenanted by the hands. (There I go again! Annie, always pull me up whenever I say 'hands.' It is a word born of the man-market and the slave gang.) And you may guess where one's landlord is also one's master it is not always easy to remind him that the roof leaks, and that the walls have not been whitewashed for three years. I cannot get the Knights to move in this matter. I believe Mr. Thomas thought I meant to insult him, when I asked how he would like his mother to live in such a place. He said, quite angrily, that if I understood these people I would know they preferred a place where they could indulge their free-and-easy habits of dirt and idleness, better than any set-up notions of cleanliness and decency."

"I am going to give a slip of mignonette from this bed to every little girl in Archer's Rents," said Mrs. Cromer, in a soft aside

to me.

"Then the machinery we have been using is a downright robbery," pursued Harry Cromer. "There was a new invention brought in about four years ago, which facilitated labour so much, that the payment for piece-work could be lowered, and yet with advantage to the worker. It was introduced in the workroom at the time, and the wage-scale adjusted to suit it. But by-and-by it got out of gear, and as it was rather expensive to repair, the old slower machine was brought back, but the wage-scale was never re-adjusted. It is in the women's and children's department, and that was such a hard season that they were afraid to grumble, and I believe the new girls who have taken their place since do not understand the difference in the wheel-work. And at last some pulley has broken and nearly killed a little boy."

"But the other machine has been repaired now, and they will begin to work it on Monday," observed his wife cheerfully. “You have succeeded in that endeavour, Harry; and I have persuaded two or three of the girls to put the extra pence they will earn into the savings'-bank. I am going with them, for it is a very awful and awkward undertaking in their eyes, and they're afraid. the clerk might be saucy."

"Why, I think you may report splendid progress, Harry," said Wills.

Mr. Cromer shook his head. "It is the spirit I meet that daunts me," he answered. "The Knights think I am mad. They rarely contradict me flatly, or straightforwardly refuse what I ask. If they would do so, and let us argue it out between us, I should have hope, but they put me off civilly, and try to shut me up in a moral strait-jacket. They tacitly say to me that I shall come round presently, and be as sane as they are. They give me to understand they were once as I am, and that they can admire the generous enthusiasm of ignorance and inexperience, but that there is a time for everything, and that this must pass away. O David! shall

I ever live to eat, and drink, and make merry, and think of Archer's Rents and the factory only as a sordid safe, whence I take my money? Thomas Knight laughs and says he was sure how it would be when I came to live so near. If I went to and fro every day to some nice part of the West-end, or a little way out of town, and made a rule to relieve my mind with a concert or a party, I should be all right. David, shall I live to shut my conscience in a box like that? How black and bitter it will be when it will have to be looked upon at last! Archer Knight sympathises with me, in his own fashion. He tried living here once himself, he says. Lodgings were cheaper, and it spared travelling fares, and he wanted to save money. But the people did not know how to let one alone; they'd come after hours, when anybody was dying suddenly, or being born unseasonably, and beg for the advance of a shilling or two. says it is too much of a strain for the nervous system, and bids me think of my wife, and take care of myself, for health is sooner lost than regained, and everything else is generally lost with it; and then he tells me of this merchant or that manufacturer who had paralysis, or slow softening of the brain, and died in want, and left families to beggary, and then he shakes his head, adding that charity begins at home, and that while we are pitying others we must take care not to become pitiable ourselves."

He

"My compliments to Mr. Archer," said Mrs. Cromer playfully, "and I shall not go to beggary in a hurry. Am I not an experienced governess, also a fair milliner and a decent sempstress? He that hath a trade hath an estate."

Her husband looked at her with a serious smile. "But worst of all," he went on, "the

work-people mistrust me. They wonder what I am after. They think I want to give an inch to blind their eyes while I take an ell." "Why should they trust us till they have tried us?" asked his wife, putting her hand through his arm. "They will trust us then. Archer's Rents didn't half like my first visits, though I never went without some excuse about washing, or needlework, or so forth. But it has liked me well enough since I ran in without my gloves, that afternoon that little Dick Hunter hurt his back in the engine-room. Here's the missis,' they said, and somebody asked, 'How did you know o' the accident, mum?' I just said I heard the child scream as he was carried out of the works, and the doctor was coming as fast as he could, for I had spoken in at the surgery as I passed. And then they let me make myself quite at home, and helped me to get off Dick's poor little rags as he lay struggling on my knee, and of her own accord one woman brought a clean sheet for the hard bed; it was a sin not to lay the little chap down clean when you didn't know when he'd move again,' she said, 'and the doctor acoming too.' Poor little Dick, he put up his face to kiss me before I left him that night. Between the pain and the opiate, he didn't know me then, but he has kissed me every day since. I must not miss going to see him this evening. Perhaps you will come with me, Mr. Garrett. I think we may leave Harry to entertain David."

It was my first experience of "visiting the poor." It is always hard to recall one's fancy after one has got the fact, but I believe I had a pre-conceived notion that "the poor" made a curtsey and dusted a chair, and answered every question with the fullest confidence, being addressed by their unprefixed surname. I must have got that idea from somewhere, and I do not think it is quite individual to my own inexperience. All my life long I have been grateful to Mrs. Cromer for the new light she gave me.

Archer's Rents was a small court opening from a street off the Kingsland Road, and consisted of about six high, tumble-down old houses. Everybody in Archer's Rents was very poor, Mrs. Cromer told me as we went along, but these Hunters were about the poorest of them all-little Dick could at most only earn three shillings a week in the factory, and his grandmother, who sold iron-holders, skewers, and such other trifles, was often deprived of such poor possibility of gain, by attacks of rheumatism that threatened soon to disable her entirely. There was

no relation to help her or Dick. Dick's mother was her daughter, and she was still alive; but they did not know where she was. I never heard more of her history, but I think I can guess what it was.

Every room in Archer's Rents held a family. The "first-floor fronts" mostly took in "boarders" as well. The Hunters lived in a tiny little third room on the groundfloor. I suppose its window must have been partly blocked up, for even its dirt could not wholly account for the little light it gave— scarcely enough to enable me to distinguish its occupants.

"How do you do, Mrs. Hunter ?" said my companion cheerfully, stepping straightforward into the unsavoury gloom. "I've brought somebody else to see Dick. Poor Dick is used to seeing so many people, he must find it rather dull to see only us, Mrs. Hunter."

66

'Deary me, miss," grumbled a cross voice from what seemed a heap of rags on the hearth. "Your knock just wakened me out o' the sweetest bit o' nap I've had since a fortnight come Monday. I gets none at night, the lad's that uneasy; and it comes hard, it do, to one at my time o' life. What's the 'ospittles for, if it's not for the likes o' me, that's had my share o' troubles a-bringing up six of 'em, that one way or another ha' never paid back a pen'orth."

"You see, the man who was with Dick, when he was hurt, did not think it was so serious at first," said Mrs. Cromer soothingly. "He fancied you'd make it all well directly. And now the doctor says it would hurt Dick to move him."

"It'll kill him to lie here, I reckon," said the old woman recklessly. "I ain't like a reg'lar nuss. If it's anything in the orange line I'm up to it, and I knows about matches, and I've taken a turn at the pickle-pottin' in my time; but I never did no nussin'. My two boys both died in 'ospittle, and my old man was took off in a fit at the p'lice station. It was printed in the newspapers, his name and all, and the bobbies near got in for it. The gals, they never wanted no physicking, 'cept a good sound box o' the ear, and they wanted that oftener nor they got it, so I never done no nussin'. Dick ain't havin' a fair chance. How can I be expected to nuss like a woman that's a-sippin' her tea, and her gin, and a-pickin' at all manner o' good things all day long? I never professes to be a nuss-I don't."

"I'd rather stay with you, granny," piped a weak little treble from the bed. "'Ospittle's

strange. And they wouldn't let Jack inpoor Jack."

"Ah, Dick, dearie," said Mrs. Cromer, bending to kiss a tiny head that came poking up from the bed-clothes, "how are you today? And how is Jack? Mr. Garrett, this is our friend Jack. Jack is the best dog in the world, isn't he, Dick? Talking of nurses, Mrs. Hunter, we quite forgot Jack, who, I believe, is a better nurse than any of us."

And the little figure on the bed put out its thin hand and laid the dog's paw on the old woman's ragged arm. She shook it in a rough, but not unkindly way. "Seems a rum thing that we should keep you, that can't keep ourselves," she said.

"I've brought something for Jack," said Mrs. Cromer," and something for Dick. But Jack must wait till his master is done, therefore Jack's master must eat his supper very heartily and readily, for we want to see Jack take his." And, rising from her seat, she lit a candle that stood in a black bottle on the mantelshelf, and then opened a little basket which she had brought with her, and produced a dainty white china plate, with a shape of calf's-foot jelly upon it, and a silver spoon. If a fairy brought a crystal goblet of nectar to a rich valetudinarian, I don't suppose it would interest and excite him as these simple delicacies interested and excited little Dick. He must not be moved. She could only just raise his head slightly from the pillow.

I could see him better now in the dim candlelight; and, sitting watching him, I wondered how he had looked when he was going to and fro, a little dirty working boy, in grimy smock and breeches; just like thousands whom we push aside on our pathways. For he was not a specially pretty child, and I daresay he had once yelled and halloed, and played at "cat," and all other pranks which are thought just beautiful touching animal spirits in the fine boys of the grand old endowed schools, but only sheer impudence and bad behaviour on the part of smutty factory brats, who ought to be kept in order by the police! But now the dirt was washed away, and the bed-gown was as clean and neat as need be, the loan of a poor widow sempstress, a relic of her own boy who had died in better days. All those outer differences, with which the devil delights to cheat man into forgetfulness of the universal brotherhood, were vanished. Something else had come in their stead. I was but an inexperienced lad then, and did not know what it was that touched the childish brow with sublimity.

Mrs. Cromer had some meat for Jack, done up in a piece of paper; and he was lifted upon the bed that his master might see him enjoy it; Mrs. Cromer telling me, meanwhile, how Dick had found him starving in the street one snowy morning, and had taken care of him, and Jack had waited for him outside the factory every day ever since. It was no fault of Dick's that his care could not fill Jack's skinny ribs and thicken his shaggy coat.

"What are you thinking of, little man?" she asked gently, with her pure fair face resting against the broken post of the old bed. Jack had finished his meal, and laid himself down contentedly under his master's hand, which was absently patting the rough brown head.

Dick did not take his eyes from Jack. "Granny told the doctor she was sure I wouldn't get better," he said, "and he didn't say I would."

"Are you afraid, dear?" she said tenderly. "You must not be afraid. There is SOMEBODY who loved little children so dearly, that He came all the way from the glorious sky to take them in his arms, and say, 'Of such is the kingdom of heaven.' He will take care of you, little Dick."

"But will He take care of Jack when I'm gone?" said the boy, and a great heavy tear fell on the dog's head, and made him shake his ragged ears.

Mrs. Cromer paused, only for a moment, and then answered in her sweet voice, calm for all its sound of tears:

"Yes, Dick; for He has put it into my heart to take Jack home with me directly you don't want him any more."

"Have He! O poor old Jack, won't you have a jolly berth!" And the boy lay quiet, smiling, for a while. "You said as Somebody knows everything as is going on. Can He hear us speaking in here?" "Yes, dear; He can thinking."

even hear you

"And what did you say Somebody's name was? I ain't heard it often, and my head is queer like."

"Jesus Christ,-the Lord Jesus."

I want to say 'Thank ye' to Him. Lord Jesus Christ,-thank you for looking arter poor Jack. It's easy enough to love you when you're so good. I don't think I'll feel strange where you are, and if I don't remember your name right, please don't be angry, but teach me. Help granny to sell her matches, and don't let the parish take off a loaf because I ain't here."