"She looked like a bon-bon
which has fallen in the mire."

The conversation began, and was carried on as such conversations usually
are. If each had kept to her own language and her own line of thought,
neither of these two women would have understood a word that the other
said.

But as the poor always know the rich much better than the rich know the
poor, the latter have at last acquired a peculiar dialect--a particular
tone which experience has taught them to use when they are anxious to
make themselves understood--that is to say, understood in such a way
as to incline the wealthy to beneficence. Nearer to each other they can
never come.

Of this dialect the poor woman was a perfect mistress, and Mrs. Warden
had soon a general idea of her miserable case. She had two children--a
boy of four or five, who was lying on the floor, and a baby at the
breast.

Mrs. Warden gazed at the pallid little creature, and could not believe
that it was thirteen months old. At home in his cradle she herself had
a little colossus of seven months, who was at least half as big again as
this child.

"You must give the baby something strengthening," she said; and she had
visions of phosphate food and orange jelly.

At the words "something strengthening," a shaggy head looked up from the
bedstraw; it belonged to a pale, hollow eyed man with a large woollen
comforter wrapped round his jaws.

Mrs. Warden was frightened. "Your husband?" she asked.

The poor woman answered yes, it was her husband. He had not gone to work
to-day because he had such bad toothache.

Mrs. Warden had had toothache herself, and knew how painful it is. She
uttered some words of sincere sympathy.

The man muttered something, and lay back again; and at the same moment
Mrs. Warden discovered an inmate of the room whom she had not hitherto
observed.

It was a quite young girl, who was seated in the corner at the other
side of the stove. She stared for a moment at the fine lady, but quickly
drew back her head and bent forward, so that the visitor could see
little but her back.

Mrs. Warden thought the girl had some sewing in her lap which she wanted
to hide; perhaps it was some old garment she was mending.

"Why does the big boy lie upon the floor?" asked Mrs. Warden.

"He's lame," answered the mother. And now followed a detailed account of
the poor boy's case, with many lamentations. He had been attacked with
hip-disease after the scarlet-fever.

"You m