to help me; 'e's got his mother to 'elp and a heavy family besides. No, I don't take food out of the stomachs of little children, a-stunting of their growth, as nothing can be done for them later, and a-starving of their brains--I pulls my belt a bit tighter, thank you. Yes, I know what I am talking about--didn't I spend nearly every Sunday afternoon for nigh on twenty years at Colney Hatch? Well, the will of the Lord be done--but why if He be Almighty He lets folks be mad when He might strike 'em dead has always puzzled and tried my faith. "Yes, I lives on my five-shilling pension and what my last master left me; half a crown rent doesn't leave me much for food. I allus had a good appetite, I'm sorry to say, and I often dream of grilled steaks--not since the brownchitis, though; I'm all for lemons and fizzy drinks. The folks 'ere are very kind and often bring me some of their dinner, but Lord! they are poor cooks, and if their 'usbands drink I for one ain't surprised. I can grill a steak with any one, and I attribute my independent income to my steaks; at my last place the master thought the world of them, and when there was rumpuses in the kitchen I used to hear 'im say: 'Sack the whole blooming lot, but remember Brooks stays,' and stay I did till the old gentleman died and remembered his steaks in his will. "Well, I was going to tell you how I caught this cold, only you will keep on interrupting of me. I saw as how there was going to be a funeral at St. Paul's, and I thought I'd go. I allus was one for looking at men, and having been kitchen-maid at York Palace, I took on a taste for cathedrals and stained windows and music and such-like, as a sort of respite from the troubles and trials of life. "It was just beautiful to hear the organ play and to see the gold cross carried in front of the dear little chorister-boys, and I says to myself: 'Their mas are proud of them this day.' Then came the young chaps who sing tenor and bass--fine upstanding young men--and then the curates with their holy faces, but at the end were the bishops and deans and such-like, and they were that h'old and h'ugly I was quite ashamed. "Well, I thought I'd treat myself to a motor-bus after my long walk. The young chap says: 'Don't go up top, mother, you'll catch cold.' 'Thank you kindly,' I says, 'but I ain't a 'ot-house plant, being born on the moors,' and up I went, but Lor'! I hadn't reckoned how the wind cut going the galloping pace we went; it petrified to the negrigi, as poor mother used to say--no, I don't know where the negrigi is--but take off your fur-coat top of a motor-bus in a vehement east wind and perhaps you'll feel. "Yes, that's little Walker's bell a-going--it ain't a wedding and it ain't a funeral; it's a kind of prayers that he says, chiefly to 'isself, at five o'clock--'e's 'Igh Church.