The rooms are long, having a gallery-like effect, with rows of windows on one side, and everywhere is cleanliness and light and space. There was an appetising smell of potatoes baked in their jackets, and cold roast mutton, and down the long tables were placed at intervals a knife and fork, a mug, a piece of bread and a cake. The girls came trooping in and stood each by her place behind the forms, then at a given signal they stepped over the forms and stood to sing grace. At another signal they seated themselves, and the nurses who were serving placed portions of meat and potatoes on plates, which were handed from one to another down the long length of the narrow tables. The children seemed quite unconscious of the spectators who had come to stare at them whilst they ate their Sunday dinner, and as one watched their contented faces and unconcerned manners one felt that, no matter what tragedies had accompanied their advent into a world of dark problems, _here_, at least, there was no tragedy. "An' to think," said Mrs. D., as we followed the attendant upstairs to inspect the dormitories, "to think that there might 'ave bin some of the _mothers_ in that very church this mornin'." "_And_ fathers," I reminded her. "I _don't think_," answered the old lady. "A father out er wedlock's a very different thing to a mother out er wedlock. Nature never took much account er the _fathers_. _They_ ony got a walkin'-on part, and some of them's precious quick at _walkin' orf_ when it's a case er payin' the piper." The long, long rows of little white-counterpaned beds in the dormitories were an eloquent comment on the old lady's indictment of my sex, and I am glad it was a _man_ who thought of making a home for the babies. If Thomas Coram's ghost walks, it must sometimes pay a visit to the little sleepers who have no mothers to tuck them up. Those long dormitories, too, must often be haunted at nights by ghosts of the living women, who, in their dreams, look for _one_ round face on its pillow--the one who is _theirs_. To visit them in the flesh is not allowed. The surrender of the babies is complete, no alternative being compatible with the working of the scheme which is to save the child and at the same time to hide the mother's shame. One hears stories of callous behaviour on the part of some of the mothers. But such cases are rare, I should think, and that long pathway leading from the hospital to the iron gates must have been a _via dolorosa_ to many a woman who trod it on her way back home with empty arms.