ling of cascades of soup into the cans, and a hubbub
of voices; a toothless, white-haired, blear-eyed hag lamented in
excellent English that soup was refused her, owing to her case not
having yet been investigated, and her tears moistened the one loaf she
received. In like hard case a Russian threw himself on the stones and
howled. But at last Esther was running through the mist, warmed by the
pitcher which she hugged to her bosom, and suppressing the blind impulse
to pinch the pair of loaves tied up in her pinafore. She almost flew up
the dark flight of stairs to the attic in Royal Street. Little Sarah was
sobbing querulously. Esther, conscious of being an angel of deliverance,
tried to take the last two steps at once, tripped and tumbled
ignominiously against the garret-door, which flew back and let her fall
into the room with a crash. The pitcher shivered into fragments under
her aching little bosom, the odorous soup spread itself in an irregular
pool over the boards, and flowed under the two beds and dripped down the
crevices into the room beneath. Esther burst into tears; her frock was
wet and greased, her hands were cut and bleeding. Little Sarah checked
her sobs at the disaster. Moses Ansell was not yet returned from evening
service, but the withered old grandmother, whose wizened face loomed
through the gloom of the cold, unlit garret, sat up on the bed and
cursed her angrily for a _Schlemihl_. A sense of injustice made Esther
cry more bitterly. She had never broken anything for years past. Ikey,
an eerie-looking dot of four and a half years, tottered towards her (all
the Ansells had learnt to see in the dark), and nestling his curly head
against her wet bodice, murmured:

"Neva mind, Estie, I lat oo teep in my new bed."

The consolation of sleeping in that imaginary new bed to the possession
of which Ikey was always looking forward was apparently adequate; for
Esther got up from the floor and untied the loaves from her pinafore. A
reckless spirit of defiance possessed her, as of a gambler who throws
good money after bad. They should have a mad revelry to-night--the two
loaves should be eaten at once. One (minus a hunk for father's supper)
would hardly satisfy six voracious appetites. Solomon and Rachel,
irrepressibly excited by the sight of the bread, rushed at it greedily,
snatched a loaf from Esther's hand, and tore off a crust each with their
fingers.

"Heathen," cried the old grandmother. "Washing and ben