All the children seem very fond of the good Mrs. K——. As we leave the schoolroom, one little thing comes up crying, and clinging to her, “A boy has been and ’it me!” But when the mistress says, “Well, never mind, you shall have your dinner,” the child is instantly consoled; “and you, and you, and you,” she continues; but this selection is too heartrending; and with the help of another lucky shilling, nobody present is left out. I remember particularly a lank child, with great black eyes and fuzzy hair, and a pinched grey face, who stood leaning against a wall in the sun: once, in the Pontine Marshes, years ago, I remember seeing such another figure. “That poor thing is seventeen,” says Mrs. K——. “She sometimes loiters here all day long; she has no mother: and she often comes and tells me her father is so drunk she dare not go home. I always give her a dinner when I can. This is the kitchen.” The kitchen is a delightful little clean-scrubbed place, with rice pudding baking in the oven, and a young mistress, and a big girl, busy bringing in great caldrons full of the mutton broth I have been scenting all this time. It is a fresh, honest, hungry smell, quite different from that unwholesome compound of fry and sauce, and hot, pungent spice, and stew and mess, which comes steaming up, some seven hours later, into our dining-rooms, from the reeking kitchens below. Here a poor woman is waiting, with a jug, and a round-eyed baby. The mistress tells me the people in the neighbourhood are too glad to buy what is left of the children’s dinner. “Look what good stuff it is,” says Mrs. K——, and she shows me a bowl full of the jelly, to which it turns when cold. As the two girls come stepping through the sunny doorway, with the smoking jar between them, I think Mr. Millais might make a pretty picture of the little scene; but my attention is suddenly distracted by the round-eyed baby, who is peering down into the great soup-jug with such wide wide open eyes, and little hands outstretched—such an eager, happy face, that it almost made one laugh, and cry too, to see. The baby must be a favourite, for he is served, and goes off in his mother’s arms, keeping vigilant watch over the jug, while four or five other jugs and women are waiting still in the next room. Then into rows of little yellow basins our mistress pours the broth, and we now go in to see the company in the dining-hall, waiting for its banquet. Ah me! but it is a pleasanter sight to see than any company in all the land. Somehow, as the children say grace, I feel as if there was indeed a blessing on the food: a blessing which brings colour into these wan cheeks, and strength and warmth into these wasted little limbs. Meanwhile, the expectant company is growing rather impatient, and is battering the benches with its spoons, and tapping neighbouring heads as well. There goes a little guest, scrambling from his place across the room and back again. So many are here to-day,