ungest-born,
Ernest, aged sixteen months. Then he watched beside the dead all day
until the evening, when the police came, and he told them to put a penny
in the slot of the gas-meter in order that they might have light to see.

Frank Cavilla stood in court, dressed in a much worn grey suit, and
wearing no collar. He was a good-looking man, with a mass of black hair,
dark, expressive eyes, delicately chiselled nose and chin, and wavy, fair
moustache.

CHAPTER XXIII--THE CHILDREN

"Where home is a hovel, and dull we grovel,
Forgetting the world is fair."

There is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and it is the
children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder goes his round. It
is fascinating to watch them, the new-born, the next generation, swaying
and stepping, with pretty little mimicries and graceful inventions all
their own, with muscles that move swiftly and easily, and bodies that
leap airily, weaving rhythms never taught in dancing school.

I have talked with these children, here, there, and everywhere, and they
struck me as being bright as other children, and in many ways even
brighter. They have most active little imaginations. Their capacity for
projecting themselves into the realm of romance and fantasy is
remarkable. A joyous life is romping in their blood. They delight in
music, and motion, and colour, and very often they betray a startling
beauty of face and form under their filth and rags.

But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who steals them all away. They
disappear. One never sees them again, or anything that suggests them.
You may look for them in vain amongst the generation of grown-ups. Here
you will find stunted forms, ugly faces, and blunt and stolid minds.
Grace, beauty, imagination, all the resiliency of mind and muscle, are
gone. Sometimes, however, you may see a woman, not necessarily old, but
twisted and deformed out of all womanhood, bloated and drunken, lift her
draggled skirts and execute a few grotesque and lumbering steps upon the
pavement. It is a hint that she was once one of those children who
danced to the organ-grinder. Those grotesque and lumbering steps are all
that is left of the promise of childhood. In the befogged recesses of
her brain has arisen a fleeting memory that she was once a girl. The
crowd closes in. Little girls are dancing beside her, about her, with
all the pretty graces she dimly recollects, but can no