ss and
irretrievable confusion!

Mounting a staircase, Mr Bright conducted the ladies to a gallery from
which they had a bird's-eye view of the entire hall. It was, in truth,
a series of rooms, connected with the great central apartment by
archways. Through these--extending away in far perspective, so that the
busy workers in the distance became like miniature men--could be seen
rows on rows of facing and sorting-tables, covered, heaped up, and
almost hidden, by the snows of the evening mail. Here the chaos of
letters, books, papers, etcetera, was being reduced to order--the whole
under the superintendence of a watchful gentleman, on a raised platform
in the centre, who took good care that England should not only _expect_,
but also be _assured_, that every man and boy did his duty.

Miss Lillycrop glanced at the clock opposite. It was a quarter to
seven.

"Do you mean to tell me," she said, turning full on Mr Bright, and
pointing downwards, "that that ocean of letters will be gone, and these
tables emptied by eight o'clock?"

"Indeed I do, ma'am; and more than what you see there, for the district
bags have not all come in yet. By eight o'clock these tables will be as
bare as the palm of my hand."

Mr Bright extended a large and manly palm by way of emphasising his
remark.

Miss Lillycrop was too polite to say, "That's a lie!" but she firmly,
though mutely, declined to believe it.

"D'you observe the tables just below us, ma'am?"

He pointed to what might have been six large board-room tables,
surrounded by boys and men as close as they could stand. As, however,
the tables in question were covered more than a foot deep with letters,
Miss Lillycrop only saw their legs.

"These are the facing-tables," continued Mr Bright. "All that the men
and lads round 'em have got to do with the letters there is to arrange
them for the stampers, with their backs and stamps all turned one way.
We call that facing the letters. They have also to pick out and pitch
into baskets, as you see, all book-packets, parcels, and newspapers that
may have been posted by mistake in the letter-box."

While the sorter went on expounding matters, one of the tables had begun
to show its wooden surface as its "faced" letters were being rapidly
removed, but just then a man with a bag on his shoulder came up, sent a
fresh cataract of letters on the blank spot, and re-covered it.
Presently a stream of men with bags on their backs came in.