servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship
of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions
left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks,
and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons
I shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock.
By two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in
its hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five
hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild
mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought
for them, as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to
scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged
to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in _queue_, two abreast,
and compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the
purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.

At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and
close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the girls
still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you to-day."

"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears
welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've been
waiting _such_ a long time."

"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all between
you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got
'em, can you? Come earlier next time."

[Illustration: "NOW THEN, PASS ALONG."]

Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police,
who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with gloating
anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now
then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that
irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had your chance.
Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere
demonstration of the unloved. You'll have to put up with your ordinary
young men for to-day. Pass along."

In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda, who
told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the boys.

Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there
moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left them--most of
their servants did at t