t. So I was not surprised when she said slowly and
insinuatingly, as though feeling every step of the way:

"You know the misunderstanding you had this morning--about the change?"

"Yes," I answered, more mystified than ever. Then, as she looked me full
in the eyes, light dawned upon me, and I saw the old woman up-stairs in
a character as startling as it was infamous.

"Well," Mrs. Lumley said, when she saw that I understood; and with that
she again dropped into her habitual expression of bovine stolidness. We
parted at the foot of the stairs, she to disappear into the back of the
house, and I to join the waifs in the unfriendly sitting-room.

The afternoon I spent sitting in Union Square, whence I went at
half-past five for a bite of supper in the dairy lunch-room where I had
made my toilet in the morning. I had had no luncheon, feeling that I
could not afford more than two meals a day now. I sat a long time over
my cup of coffee and three hard rolls. I did not want to return to that
dreary house until the lamps should be lighted and it was time to go to
bed. The very thought of returning to sit with those forlorn waifs, in
that cheerless whitewashed sitting-room, was appalling.

I returned a few minutes before seven, just in time to hear the children
singing the last stanza of "Beulah Land" as I passed up-stairs to the
dormitory on the third floor. An old woman sat outside the door,
crocheting a shawl in such light as she could get from a blue-shaded
night-lamp that hung in the middle of the great whitewashed room within.
She looked up from her work long enough to challenge me with a shrewd,
impertinent look of inquiry, demanded to know if I had any lead-pencils
about my person, and, receiving a polite negative, allowed me to pass.

I was not the first arrival. In the dim light I could make out, here and
there, a bulging surface in the row of gray-blanketed cots, while in the
quiet I could hear the deep breathing of the sleepers. For they all
seemed to be asleep, save one who tossed from one side to the other and
sighed wearily. The latter was not far away from my own cot, and before
I had finished undressing she was sitting up looking at me.

"I'd give anything for a drink of water," she said softly.

"Why, is there no water?" I whispered.

The words were not out of my mouth before there was a thumping upon the
floor outside, and the voice of the beldame spoke sharply:

"No talking, girls!"

The thirsty gi