"No workhouse--no workhouse!" said the old woman, turning round suddenly, in a clear, lofty voice. "No workhouse, sir, for an officer's daughter!" And she relapsed into her stupor. At that moment the other girl entered with the coals--but without staying to light the fire, ran up to Ellen with some trumpery dainty she had bought, and tried to persuade her to eat it. "We have been telling Mr. Mackaye everything," said poor Lizzy. "A pleasant story, isn't it? Oh! if that fine lady, as we're making that riding-habit for, would just spare only half the money that goes to dressing her up to ride in the park, to send us out to the colonies, wouldn't I be an honest girl there?--maybe an honest man's wife! Oh, my God, wouldn't I slave my fingers to the bone to work for him! Wouldn't I mend my life then! I couldn't help it--it would be like getting into heaven out of hell. But now--we must--we must, I tell you. I shall go mad soon, I think, or take to drink. When I passed the gin-shop down there just now, I had to run like mad for fear I should go in; and if I once took to that--Now then, to work again. Make up the fire, Mrs. * * * *, please do." And she sat down, and began stitching frantically at the riding-habit, from which the other girl had hardly lifted her hands or eyes for a moment during our visit. We made a motion, as if to go. "God bless you," said Ellen; "come again soon, dear Mr. Mackaye." "Good-bye," said the elder girl; "and good-night to you. Night and day's all the same here--we must have this home by seven o'clock to-morrow morning. My lady's going to ride early, they say, whoever she may be, and we must just sit up all night. It's often we haven't had our clothes off for a week together, from four in the morning till two the next morning sometimes--stitch, stitch, stitch. Somebody's wrote a song about that--I'll learn to sing it--it'll sound fitting-like up here." "Better sing hymns," said Ellen. "Hymns for * * * * * *?" answered the other, and then burst out into that peculiar, wild, ringing, fiendish laugh--has my reader never heard it? I pulled out the two or three shillings which I possessed, and tried to make the girls take them, for the sake of poor Ellen. "No; you're a working man, and we won't feed on you--you'll want it some day--all the trade's going the same way as we, as fast as ever it can!" Sandy and I went down the stairs. "Poetic element? Yon lassie, rejoicing in her disfigurement and not her beauty--like the nuns of Peterborough in auld time--is there na poetry there? That puir lassie, dying on the bare boards, and seeing her Saviour in her dreams, is there na poetry there, callant? That auld body owre the fire, wi' her 'an officer's dochter,' is there na poetry there? That ither, prostituting hersel to buy food for her freen--is there na poetry there?--tragedy-- "With hues as when some mighty painter dips His pen in dyes of earthquake and eclipse.