able to do an
unusual kindness without compromising the parish.

Thus things had gone on for many months, when one day an eye of that
Argus monster, the Public, was set upon Ginx's Baby. A well-known
nobleman, calling at the workhouse to see a little girl whom he had
saved from infamy, as he passed down a corridor was arrested by the
notice on the door of our hero's room. Curiosity took him in, and horror
chained him there for some time. Had he not entered, Ginx's Baby, spite
of Snigger, would in twenty-four hours have ceased to supply facts
to history. He was suffering from low fever, and his condition was as
sensationally shocking as any reporter could have wished. Out rushed
the peer for a doctor, took a cab to a magistrate and detailed the whole
case, to be repeated in next morning's papers. Penny-a-liners ran to the
spot, wrote vivid descriptions of the baby and the room, and transcribed
the notice. The Guardians were drubbed in trenchant leaders and
indignant letters. They, instead of bending to the storm, strove to
confront it, and passed angry resolutions of a childish and grotesque
character. The few of them who possessed any sense of propriety were
railed at in the meetings till they ceased to attend. The uproar outside
increased. Why did not the President of the Poor-Law Board interfere? At
last he did interfere: that is, instead of visiting the scene himself,
and satisfying his own eyes as to the truth of what his ears had heard,
a process that would have taken a couple of hours, he appointed a
gentleman to hold an inquiry. The Guardians became furious. The reports
of their proceedings read like the vagaries of a lunatic asylum or the
deliberations of the American Senate. They discharged Snigger for breach
of orders, substituting a relative of Mr. Stink. They put a lock on the
door, and passed food to the Baby by a stick. A committee was appointed
to see him fed, and they forwarded a memorial to the Poor-Law Board,
stating that "he daily had more food than he could possibly eat, and
was in admirable condition." They refused to allow any doctor but one
employed by themselves to see him. They procured from him a certificate
that the noble busybody and his physician had made a mistake, and that
all the functions of life in the infant appeared to be in perfect order.
Then came the gentleman, and the inquiry, and his report, and a letter
from the Poor-Law Board, and further discussions and more letters, until
th