Mrs. —— came in while I was still at the school, and took me over the workshops where the elder boys learn to carpenter and carve. Scores of drawing-rooms in Belgravia are bristling with the pretty little tables and ornaments these young artificers design. A young man with a scriptural name superintends the work; the boys are paid for their labour, and send out red velvet and twisted legs, and wood ornamented in a hundred devices. There is an industrial class for girls, too. The best and oldest are taken in, and taught housework, and kitchen-work, and sewing. Even the fathers and mothers come in for a share of the good things, and are invited to tea sometimes, and amused in the evening with magic lanterns, and conjurors, and lecturings. I do not dwell at greater length upon the industrial part of these schools, because I want to speak of another very similar institution I went to see another day. On my way thither I had occasion to go through an old churchyard, full of graves and sunshine: a quaint old suburban place, with tree-tops and old brick houses all round about, and ancient windows looking down upon the quiet tombstones. Some children were playing among the graves, and two rosy little girls in big bonnets were sitting demurely on a stone, and grasping two babies that were placidly basking in the sun. The little girls look up and grin as I go by. I would ask them the way, only I know they won’t answer, and so I go on, out at an old iron gate, with a swinging lamp, up “Church Walk” (so it is written), and along a trim little terrace, to where a maid-of-all-work is scrubbing at her steps. When I ask the damsel my way to B—— Street, she says she “do-ant know B—— Street, but there’s Little Davis Street round the corner;” and when I say I’m afraid Little Davis Street is no good to me, she says, “’Tain’t Gunter’s Row, is it?” So I go off in despair, and after some minutes of brisk walking, find myself turning up the trim little terrace again, where the maid-of-all-work is still busy at her steps. This time, as we have a sort of acquaintance, I tell her that I am looking for a house where girls are taken in, and educated, and taught to be housemaids. At which confidence she brightens up, and says, “There’s a ’ouse round the-ar with somethink wrote on the door, jest where the little boy’s a-trundlin’ of his ’oop.” And so, sure enough, following the hoop, I come to an old-fashioned house in a courtyard, and ring at a wooden door on which “Girls’ Industrial Schools” is painted up in white letters. A little industrious girl, in a lilac pinafore, let me in, with a curtsey. “May I come in and see the place?” say I. “Please, yes,” says she (another curtsey). “Please, what name?—please, walk this way.”