the
sides under a little bench, and the whitewashed walls were relieved by
diagrams of the component parts of a sweet pea and scenes from the life
of Abraham. As usual an attempt was made at hide-and-seek under strange
conditions. Some inglorious inventor had solved the problem of playing
that royal game in an empty oblong room. His method was to plant out the
"juniors" in clusters or copses on the floor, whilst the "seniors"
lurked and ran and hunted in and out their undergrowth. To add zest to
the chase, Clem now let Looney slip as a kind of bag-fox, and the
half-witted creature went lumbering and blubbering about in real terror
of his life, whilst his pursuers encouraged his speed with artifices in
which the animated spinnies and coverts deferentially joined. Unnoticed
and lonely in the crowd, Alfred was almost sorry he was not half-witted
too.

At last he was marched off to his dormitory with fifty-five others, and
lay for a long time listening with the fascination of innocence whilst
Clem in a low voice described with much detail the scenes of "human
nature" which he had recently witnessed down hopping with his people.
Almost before he was well asleep, as it seemed, the strange new life
began again with the bray of a bugle and the flaring of gas, and he had
to hurry down to the model lavatory to wash under his special little jet
of warm spray, so elaborately contrived in the hope of keeping
ophthalmia in check.

So, with drills and scrubbings and breakfasts and schools, the great
circles of childhood's days and nights went by, each distinguished from
another only by the dinner and the Sunday services. And from first to
last the pauper child was haunted by the peculiar pauper smell,
containing elements of whitewash, damp boards, soap, steam, hot pipes,
the last dinner and the next, corduroys, a little chlorate of lime, and
the bodies of hundreds of children. It was not unwholesome.

IV

One thing shed a light over the days as it approached, and then left
them dark till the hope of its return brought a dubious twilight. Once a
month, on a Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Reeve had promised to come and see
the two children. She might have come oftener, for considerable
allowance was made for family affection. But it was difficult enough in
four weeks to lay by the few pence which would take her down to the
suburb. Punctually at two she was at the gate, and till four she might
sit with the children in the lodge. Not muc