d heard the
merry voices of happy children who were playing behind a high wall.

I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the mood in which
I entered the orphanage. In spite of all that life had done to me, I
really and truly felt as if I were about to confer an immense favour
upon the doctor by allowing him to take care of my little woman.

Oh, how well I remember that little point of time!

My first disappointment was to learn that the good doctor was dead, and
when I was shown into the office of his successor (everything bore such
a businesslike air) I found an elderly man with a long "three-decker"
neck and a glacial smile, who, pushing his spectacles up on to his
forehead, said in a freezing voice:

"Well, ma'am, what is _your_ pleasure?"

After a moment of giddiness I began to tell him my story--how I had a
child and her nurse was not taking proper care of her; how I was in
uncongenial employment myself, but hoped soon to get better; how I loved
my little one and expected to be able to provide for her presently; and
how, therefore, if he would receive her for a while, only a little
while, on the understanding, the clear and definite understanding, that
I could take her away as soon as I wished to. . . .

Oh dear! Oh dear:

I do not know what there was in my appearance or speech which betrayed
me, but I had got no further than this when the old gentleman said
sharply:

"Can you provide a copy of the register of your child's birth to show
that it is legitimate?"

What answer I made I cannot recollect, except that I told the truth in a
voice with a tremor in it, for a memory of the registry office was
rolling back on me and I could feel my blushes flushing into my face.

The result was instantaneous. The old gentleman touched a bell, drew his
spectacles down on to his nose, and said in his icy tones:

"Don't take illegitimate children if we can help it."

It was several days before I recovered from the deep humiliation of this
experience. Then (the exactions of the Olivers quickening my memory and
at the same time deadening my pride) I remembered something which I had
heard the old actress say during my time at the boarding-house about a
hospital in Bloomsbury for unfortunate children--how the good man who
founded it had been so firm in his determination that no poor mother in
her sorrow should be put to further shame about her innocent child that
he had hung out a basket at the gate at nig