"Don't you think that sufficient? I am not going to let them appear before me in rags--and so Crabb Lane knows. But there is another cause, sir. This strike has so altered the course of things that the whole order of ordinary events is turned upside down. Even if the young ones' frocks were home again, it would be ten to one against their coming to school." "I don't see the two little Hoars." And why I had been looking for those particular children I can't say, unless it was that Hoar and his peculiar manner had been floating in my mind ever since we passed him. "'Liza and Jessy--no, but they've been here till to-day," was the reply, given after a long pause. "Are you going, Mr. Johnny?--I'll just step outside with you." She drew the door close behind her, keeping the handle in her hand, and looked straight into my face. "Jacob Hoar has gone and beat his boy almost to death this morning--and the strike's the cause of _that_," she whispered, emphatically. "Jacob Hoar has!--Why, how came he to do it?"--I exclaimed, recalling more forcibly than ever the man's curious look, and the curious looks of the other men holding aloof from him. "Which of his boys is it?" "The second of them; little Dick. Yes, he is black and blue all over, they say; next door to beat to death; and his arm's broken. And they have the strike to thank for it." She repeated the concluding words more stingingly than before. That Miss Timmens was wroth with the strike, there could be no mistake. I asked her why the strike was to be thanked for the beating and the broken arm. "Because the strike has brought misery; and _that_ is the source of all the ill going on just now in Crabb Lane," was her reply. "When the men threw themselves out of work, of course they threw themselves out of wages. Some funds have been furnished to them, weekly I believe, from the Trades Union League--or whatever they call the thing--but it seems a mere nothing compared with what they used to earn. Household goods, as well as clothes, have been going to the pawn-shop, but they have now pledged all they've got to pledge, and are, it is said, in sore straits: mothers and fathers and children alike hungry. It is some time now since they have had enough to eat. Fancy that, Mr. Johnny!" "But why should Dicky be beaten for that?" I persisted, trying to keep her to the point--a rather difficult matter with Miss Timmens at all times.