ite conscious, and looked
up once more at the nurse with the old appeal.

"I want Orlando. Where's Orlando?"

"He can't come," the nurse said, after a moment, in which she turned
away.

"You promised," Polly said faintly.

"I know it," the nurse said. "He should come if he could, but he can't."

"Is he sick?" Polly said after a pause. "Did father hurt him?"

"Yes, he hurt him. He hurt him very much, but he can never hurt him any
more. Orlando is dead."

Polly lay quite silent, nor did her face change as she heard the words;
but a smile came presently, and her eyes lightened.

"You didn't know," she said. "Orlando has come. He is right here, and
somebody is carrying him. He is putting out his arms."

The child had raised herself, and looked eagerly toward the foot of the
bed, "She is bringing him to me. She says, 'Polly, you 're going to be a
lady and never do what you don't want to any more.' I thought I should
be a lady sometime, because I wanted to so much; but I didn't think it
would be so soon. They won't know me in the Buildings. I'm going to be a
lady, and never--"

Polly's eyes had closed. She fell back. What she had seen no man could
know, but the smile stayed.

It was quite certain that something at least had come to her of what she
wanted.

CHAPTER VI.

AMONG THE DRESSMAKERS.

"An Englishman's house is his castle," and an Englishwoman's no less,
and both he and she ward off intruders with an energy inherited from the
days when all men were fighters, and intensified by generations of
practice. Even a government inspector is looked upon with deep disfavor
as one result of the demoralization brought about by liberal and other
loose ways of viewing public rights. The private, self-constituted one,
it may then be judged rightly, is regarded as a meddlesome and pestilent
busybody seeking knowledge which nobody should wish to obtain, and
another illustration of what the nineteenth century is coming to.
Various committees of inquiry, from the Organized Charities and from
private bodies of workers, visit manufactories and industries in
general, where women are employed, to make it evident that there is a
desire to know how they fare. Why this wish has arisen, and why things
are not allowed to remain as the fathers left them, are two questions at
present distracting the British employer's mind, and likely, before the
inquiry is ended, to distract it more, as, day by day, the numbers
increase o