"You'll have one in two two's if you make any disturbance," Miss Sally promised her, with half a glance back at the street. "Show me into the house, if you please." "Shan't." The woman placed herself in the pathway, with arms akimbo, barring her passage. "You behave very foolishly in denying me," said Miss Sally. "Maybe; but I got my orders. _You_ never took no orders from a man, I should say--not by the looks o' yer." "You are right there." Miss Sally regarded her with a smile of conscious strength, stern but good-natured. Her gaze wandered past the woman's shoulder, and the smile broadened. Mrs. Huggins saw it broaden, and cast a look behind her, towards the house--to see Mr. Bossom, coal-grimed but cheerful, grinning down on her from the front door-step. "It's a trap!" she gasped, shooting a venomous look at Mr. Hucks. "It _looks_ like one," said Miss Sally, stepping past her; "and I shall be curious to know, by and by, who baited it." "Where shall I take ye, ma'am?" asked Sam Bossom. "Show me the children first, if you please." He walked before her down the unsavoury passage. He was unacquainted with the interior, and knew only that the way through the kitchens, by which he had come, led to the kitchen garden and missed the children's quarters. Avoiding this, and opening a door at random--a door on his right--he stepped into the bare drawing-room. Miss Sally followed, and Mrs. Huggins at her heels, protesting. Mr. Hucks brought up the rear. Finding himself in an apartment which apparently led nowhither, Sam would have turned and shepherded the party back into the corridor; but Miss Sally strode past him, attempted to fling up the window-sash, but in vain, and looking over it, beheld what Tilda had beheld--the gravelled yard, the children walking listlessly to and fro, the groups passing and repassing with scarce a lift of the eyes, the boys walking with the boys and the girls with the girls. "But it is horrible--horrible!" cried Miss Sally. "Mr. Hucks, lend me your stick, if you please. This window won't open." He passed his stick to her, supposing that she meant in some way to prise the window open. But she took it and deliberately smashed a pane--two panes--all the six panes with their coloured transparencies of the Prodigal Son. And the worst was, that the children in the yard, as the glass broke and fell, scarcely betrayed surprise. One or two glanced furtively towards the window. It seemed that they dared do no more. "Save us!" exclaimed Miss Sally. "They're starving; that's what's the matter!" "They are not, ma'am!" still protested Mrs. Huggins.