n the last one was eaten,
and she led the way to go down-stairs.

"Good time! That ain't nothin'! I've had a reg'lar bust! I'm comin'
agin'; it's bully. Now I must get my loaf and my shoes, and go along
back and take a lickin'."

That was the way Hazel caught her first child.

She made her tell her name,--Ann Fazackerley,--and promise to come
on Saturday afternoon, and bring two more girls with her.

"We'll have a party," said Hazel, "and play Puss in the Corner. But
you must get leave," she added. "Ask your mother. I don't want you
to be punished when you go home."

"Lor! you're green! I ain't got no mother. An' I always hooks jack.
I'm licked reg'lar when I gets back, anyway. There's half a dozen of
'em. When 'tain't one, it's another. That's Jane Goffey's bread;
she's been a swearin' after it this hour, you bet. But I'll
come,--see if I don't!"

Hazel drew a hard breath as she let the girl go. Back to her crowded
cellar, her Jane Goffeys, the swearings, and the lickings. What was
one hour at a time, once or twice a week, to do against all this?

But she remembered the clean little round in her face, out of which
eyes and mouth looked merrily, while she talked rough slang; the
same fun and daring,--nothing worse,--were in this child's face,
that might be in another's saying prettier words. How could she help
her words, hearing nothing but devil's Dutch around her all the
time? Children do not make the language they are born into. And the
face that could be simply merry, telling such a tale as that,--what
sort of bright little immortality must it be the outlook of?

Hazel meant to try her hour.

* * * * *

This is one of my last chapters. I can only tell you now they
began,--these real folks,--the work their real living led them up
to. Perhaps some other time we may follow it on. If I were to tell
you now a finished story of it, I should tell a story ahead of the
world.

I can show you what six weeks brought it to. I can show you them
fairly launched in what may grow to a beautiful private charity,--an
"Insecution,"--a broad social scheme,--a millennium; at any rate, a
life work, change and branch as it may, for these girls who have
found out, in their girlhood, that there is genuine living, not mere
"playing pretend," to be done in the world. But you cannot, in
little books of three hundred pages, see things through. I never
expected or promised to do that. The threescore