The afternoon had come out clear and fine; so they went out through Essex Street into the Strand, and took a cab, which soon set them down at the end of Sloane Street. Here they discharged it; and inquiring of a policeman where Moor Street was, received the intelligence that it lay down behind, but that they had better take the first turning to the right, and then inquire again. Accordingly they turned off from Sloane Street and entered the network of small lanes lying between Hans Place and Knightsbridge. Densely populated as the neighbourhood was, there were few signs of business, or the bustle of every day life. The place seemed entirely deserted by grown up people, and handed over bodily to children. The fathers were away at work, the mothers busy within the houses, but children swarmed everywhere; boys and girls of all ages and sizes, from the little baby set down upon a door step—sitting contentedly there, sucking a piece of rag, and gazing with a quiet old-fashioned look at the world around it, while its elder sister, a staid little woman of some seven years old, gossipped with another of the same standing—to lazy, hulking fellows of sixteen or seventeen, lounging idly at the corners of streets, smoking. Everywhere children engaged in every game which the youthful mind was capable of devising from the very limited materials at hand. Boys playing at hop-scotch, and tip-cat, and ball, with much shouting and rushing about, and danger to passers-by; boys playing at marbles, and games with buttons, and flat stones, and halfpence. These amusements constantly gave rise to great squabbling and disputes, in which one of the great idle fellows before mentioned was usually called in as umpire, although like umpires in general, he always failed signally in giving satisfaction to either party. Girls sitting on door steps working; girls playing at shuttlecock; little things of five or six years old in strange garments and vast bonnets, staggering along with babies nearly as big as themselves; grave little parties of nurses sitting on door steps—while the babies under their charge made dirt pies—and amusing themselves relating stories to each other,—not fanciful Arabian nights’ tales, but real histories of life:—“How father had come in on Saturday night drunk, and when mother had asked for money, how he had knocked she down.” Or, “how put about father was when he came home last night, to find that mother had been and pawned his Sunday clothes, and got drunk on it.” Many a similar tale do these little people relate gravely to each other. Poor little prematurely-old things, with their babies under their charge, and their cares already sitting heavily on their young shoulders, and such a life before them!