ings Mr. Parsons from the box, releases
the staid mistress from within, lifts or jumps down the twenty girls, and
watches them form in well-accustomed file, their banner at their head,
just pausing to be joined by the freight of a rattling omnibus, the very
roof laden with the like little Puritan damsels. The conveyances turn
back for another load, the procession is conducted slowly away, through
the road lined by troops of country children, regarding the costume as
the latest London fashion, and holding out many an eager gift of nosegays
of foxgloves, marigolds, southernwood, and white pinks. Meanwhile break,
cart, fly, van, barouche, gig, cart, and wagon continue in turn to
discharge successive loads, twenty children to each responsible keeper.
White caps are over! Behold the parish school of St. Wulstan's. Here
_is_ fashion! Here are hats, polkas, and full short skirts, but pale
faces and small limbs. The country mothers cry 'Oh!' and 'Poor little
dears, they look very tuly,' and complacently regard their own sturdy,
sunburnt offspring, at whose staring eyes and ponderous boots the city
mice glance with disdain.

Endless stream! Here waves a proud blue banner, wrought with a noble
tortoiseshell cat; and behind it, each class led by a cat-flag, marches
the Whittingtonian line, for once no ragged regiment, but arrayed by
their incumbent's three sisters in lilac cotton and straw bonnets, not
concealing, however, the pinched and squalid looks of the denizens of the
over-crowded lanes and alleys.

That complaint cannot be made of these sixteen wearers of gray frocks and
checked jackets. Stunted indeed they are, several with the
expressionless, almost featureless, visages of hereditary misery, others
with fearfully refined loveliness, but all are plump, well-fed, and at
ease. They come from the orphanage of St. Matthew's, under the charge of
the two ladies who walk with them, leading two lesser younglings, all but
too small to be brought to the festival. Yes, these are the waifs and
strays, of home and parents absolutely unknown, whom Robert Fulmort has
gathered from the streets--his most hopeful conquest from the realm of
darkness.

Here, all neatly, some stylishly dressed, are the St. Wulstan's Young
Women's Association, girls from fifteen upwards, who earn their own
livelihood in service or by their handiwork, but meet on Sunday
afternoons to read, sing, and go to church together, have books lent out
for th