h was said. They clung to
each other in silence. Or she undid the boy's stiff waistcoat, and
looked at his grey shirt, and tried to accustom herself to her Lizzie's
short hair and heavy blue dress. Many others came too, and sat in the
same room--eloquent drunkards appealing to heaven, exuberant relatives
with apples and sweets, unsatisfied till the children howled in answer
to their pathos, girls half-ashamed to be seen, and quiet working
mothers. As four struck, good-bye was said, and with Lizzie's crying in
her ears Mrs. Reeve walked blindly back through the lines of suburban
villas to the station. Twice she came, and, counting the days and weeks,
the children had made themselves ready for the third great Saturday.
Carefully washed and brushed, they sat in their separate day-rooms, and
waited. Two o'clock struck, but no message came. All the afternoon they
waited, sick with disappointment and loneliness. At last, seeing the
matron go by, Alfred said: "Please, mum, my mother ain't come to-day."

"Not come?" she answered. "Oh, that _is_ a cruel mother! But they're all
the same. Each time, sure as fate, there's somebody forgotten, so you're
no worse off than anybody else. Look, here's a nice big sweet for you
instead! Oh yes, I'll tell them about your little sister. What's your
name, did you say?"

As he went out along the corridor, Alfred came upon Looney hiding behind
an iron column, and crying to himself. "Why, what's the matter with
you?" he asked.

"My mother ain't been to see me," whined Looney, with unrestrained sobs;
"and Clem says 'e's wrote to tell 'er she'd best not come no more, 'cos
I'm so bad."

His mother had been for years at the school herself, and after serving
in a brief series of situations, had calculated the profit and loss, and
gone on the streets.

"Mine didn't come neither," said Alfred. "Matron says they're all like
that. But never you mind, 'ere's a nice sweet for you instead."

He took the sweet out of his own mouth. Looney received it cautiously,
and his great watery eyes gazed at Alfred with the awe of a biologist
who watches a new law of nature at work.

Next day after dinner Lizzie and Alfred met in the hall, as brothers and
sisters were allowed to meet for an hour on Sundays. They sat side by
side with their backs to the long tablecloths left on for tea.

"She never come," said Alfred after the growing shyness of meeting had
begun to pass off.

"You don't know what _I've_ got!"