'A splendid place, this street, for such a student as you should be, my Scholar.' The Master looked up and down--he sniffed the air, which was stuffy, with peculiar satisfaction: he smiled upon the grubby houses. 'You should come often; you should make the acquaintance of the people: you will find them so human, so desperately human, that you will presently understand that these women are your sisters. Change dresses with one of them: let your hair fall wild: take off your bonnet----' 'Shall I then be quite like them?' asked Elsie. 'Like them, Master? Oh! not quite like them.' 'Not quite like them,' he said. 'No; you could never talk like them.' He walked about among the people, who evidently knew him, because they made way for him, nodded to him, and pretended, such was their politeness, to pay no attention to the young lady who accompanied him. 'Every one of them is a study,' he continued. 'I could preach to you on every one as a text. Here is my young friend Alice Parden, for instance'--he stopped before a pale girl of seventeen or so, tall and slender, but of drooping figure, who carried a baby in her arms. 'Look at her. Consider. Alice is foolish, like all the Alices of this street. Alice must needs marry her chap a year ago, when she was sixteen and he was eighteen. Alice should be still at her club in the evening and her work in the daytime. But she must marry, and she is a child mother.--Is he out of work still?' Alice nodded, and hugged her baby closer. Mr. Edmund Gray shook his head in admonition, but gave her a coin, and went on. 'Now look at this good woman'--he stopped before a door where an Amazon was leaning--a woman five feet eight in height, with brawny arms and broad shoulders and a fiery furnace for a face--a most terrible and fearful woman.--'How are you this evening, Mrs. Moss? And how is your husband?' Long is the arm of coincidence. Mrs. Moss was just beginning to repose after a row royal; she was slowly simmering and slowly calming. There had been a row royal, a dispute, an argument, a quarrel, and a fight with her husband. All four were only just concluded. All four had been conducted on the pavement, for the sake of coolness and air and space. The residents stood around: the controversy was sharp and animated: the lady bore signs of its vehemence in a bruise, rapidly blackening, over one eye, and abrasions on her knuckles. The husband had been conducted by his friends from the spot to the public-house at the corner, where he was at present pulling himself together, and forgetting the weight of his consort's fists, and solacing his spirit with strong drink.