[Illustration: A CHILD NURSE.] Nothing can be harder and drearier than the lot of little servants, employed in many cases in lodging-houses. They are on their feet all day long, at everyone's beck and call, and never expected to be tired or to sit down properly for a meal; the food is of the poorest quality; they have heavy weights to drag up and down stairs in the shape of coal-scuttles, and the inevitable strapping baby; their sleeping apartment is as often as not a disgraceful hole, and such requisites to health as are generally considered necessary in the shape of exercise, fresh air, and baths are unknown quantities. There is a strong prejudice against the "factory girl" in many quarters, and "service" is indiscriminately extolled as far more suitable for a respectable girl of the lower classes. It would be, if there were any chance of the docker's child or the coster's child obtaining a decent situation; but, as a matter of fact, the life of the much-pitied match-worker is infinitely easier than that of these little drudges. At eight o'clock the factory girl is at any rate free to get out into the open air for a couple of hours, or to sit down and rest. The little "general" is never free. One child told me--she was the daughter of a docker who was the happy owner of eleven children, and was herself an under-fed, anæmic-looking creature--that she got up at six every morning to "make the gen'l'm's brakfast--it was a lodging-house; after that there's the steps, 'ouse work, peeling potatoes, and sich like, till dinner. I never sits down till we 'ave a cup o' tea after the lodgers 'ave 'ad their suppers. But the missis--oh, she is a nice, kind laidy, and she works with me, she do." "I suppose," I said, "you are able to get out on Sundays?" "Once a month I goes 'ome, but I nusses the baby on Sunday, as we ain't so busy. 'E's such a beauty; I'll ask missis if I can bring 'im down; e' can't walk by 'isself." And off darted the little maid to the top of the house as if she were not on her thin legs from morn to night, returning presently with a huge and well-fed baby, about three times as fat as herself. I am bound to say this girl seemed contented, and, as lodging-house landladies go, her mistress seemed a fairly good one; but what a life of exhaustive and unremitting labour, even under these conditions, for a child of thirteen; and what a life of horrors if her mistress had been a brutal or cruel woman! The usual payment is 2s. 6d. a week, but I found in a number of cases the girls only received 1s., or even 9d., their mistresses deducting the rest of their salary for the payment of the clothes which they have been compelled to buy for them on arrival, the little servant being too often in possession of a hat with feathers, a fur boa, and a brass locket, which, with the garments she stands up in, form her entire outfit. A pathetic little story was told me about a bright-faced girl I happened to come across.