“This way” leads through the court, where clothes are hanging on lines, into a little office-room, where my guide leaves me, with yet another little curtsey. In a minute the mistress comes out from the inner room. She is a kind smiling young woman, with a fresh face and a pleasant manner. She takes me in, and I see a dozen more girls in lilac pinafores reading round a deal table. They look mostly about thirteen or fourteen years old. I ask if this is all the school. “No, not all,” the mistress says, counting, “some are in the laundry, and some are not at home. When they are old enough, they go out into the neighbourhood to help to wash, or cook, or what not. Go on, girls!” and the girls instantly begin to read again, and the mistress, opening a door, brings us out into the passage. “We have room for twenty-two,” says the little mistress; “and we dress them, and feed them, and teach them as well as we can. On week-days they wear anything we can find for them, but they have very nice frocks on Sundays. I never leave them; I sit with them, and sleep among them, and walk with them; they are always friendly and affectionate to me and among themselves, and are very good companions.” In answer to my questions, she said that most of the children were put in by friends who paid half-a-crown a week for them, sometimes the parents themselves, but they could rarely afford it. That besides this, and what the girls could earn, 200_l._ a year is required for the rent of the house and expenses. “It has always been made up,” says the mistress, “but we can’t help being very anxious at times, as we have nothing certain, nor any regular subscriptions. Won’t you see the laundry?” she adds, opening a door. In the laundry is a steam, and a clatter, and irons, and linen, and a little mangle, turned by two little girls, while two or three more are busy ironing under the superintendence of a washerwoman with tucked-up sleeves; piles of shirt-collars and handkerchiefs and linen are lying on the shelves, shirts and clothes are hanging on lines across the room. The little girls don’t stop, but go on busily. “Where is Mary Anne?” says the mistress, with a little conscious pride. “There she is, mum,” says the washerwoman, and Mary Anne steps out blushing from behind the mangle, with a hot iron in her hand and a hanging head. “Mary Anne is our chief laundry-maid,” says the mistress, as we come out into the hall again. “For the first year I could make nothing of her; she was miserable in the kitchen, she couldn’t bear housework, she wouldn’t learn her lessons. In fact, I was quite unhappy about her, till one day I set her to ironing; she took to it instantly, and has been quite cheerful and busy ever since.”