to sit by him and tell
him stories, and give him his soup and gruel, and read to him. Poor,
_poor_ boy, we _must_ go, papa, won't you?"

"Not to-day, dear. It is impossible to go to-day. There, now, don't
begin to cry. Perhaps--perhaps to-morrow--but think, my love; you have
no idea how dirty--how _very_ nasty--the places are in which our lower
orders live."

"Oh! yes I have," said Di eagerly. "Haven't I seen our nursery on
cleaning days?"

A faint flicker of a smile passed over the knight's countenance.

"True, darling, but the places are far, far dirtier than that. Then the
smells. Oh! they are very dreadful--"

"What--worse than _we_ have when there's cabbage for dinner?"

"Yes, much worse than that."

"I don't care, papa. We _must_ go to see the boy--the poor, _poor_ boy,
in spite of dirt and smells. And then, you know--let me up on your knee
and I'll tell you all about it. There! Well, then, you know, I'd tidy
the room up, and even wash it a little. Oh, you can't think how nicely
I washed up my doll's room--her corner, you know,--that day when I spilt
all her soup in trying to feed her, and then, while trying to wipe it
up, I accidentally burst her, and all her inside came out--the sawdust,
I mean. It was the worst mess I ever made, but I cleaned it up as well
as Jessie herself could have done--so nurse said."

"But the messes down in Whitechapel are much worse than you have
described, dear," expostulated the parent, who felt that his powers of
resistance were going.

"So much the better, papa," replied Di, kissing her sire's lethargic
visage. "I should like _so_ much to try if I could clean up something
worse than my doll's room. And you've promised, you know."

"No--only said `perhaps,'" returned Sir Richard quickly.

"Well, that's the same thing; and now that it's all nicely settled, I'll
go and see nurse. Good-bye, papa."

"Good-bye, dear," returned the knight, resigning himself to his fate and
the newspaper.

CHAPTER THREE.

POVERTY MANAGES TO BOARD OUT HER INFANT FOR NOTHING.

On the night of the day about which we have been writing, a woman,
dressed in "unwomanly rags" crept out of the shadow of the houses near
London Bridge. She was a thin, middle-aged woman, with a countenance
from which sorrow, suffering, and sin had not been able to obliterate
entirely the traces of beauty. She carried a bundle in her arms which
was easily recognisable as a baby, from the careful