her voice. "I don't see what possesses you. You can find poor little
wretches anywhere, if you're so fond of them, without going to Briar
street. You'll bring home the small-pox or something worse."

Neither Edith nor her father made any reply, and there fell a silence
on the group that was burdensome to all. Mrs. Dinneford felt it most
heavily, and after the lapse of a few minutes withdrew from the room.

"A good dinner to four hundred hungry children, some of them half
starved," said Edith as her mother shut the door. "I shall enjoy the
sight as much as they will enjoy the feast."

A little after ten o'clock on the next morning, Mr. Dinneford and Edith
took their way to the mission-school in Briar street. They found from
fifteen to twenty ladies and gentlemen already there, and at work
helping to arrange the tables, which were set in the two long upper
rooms. There were places for nearly four hundred children, and in front
of each was an apple, a cake and a biscuit, and between every four a
large mince pie. The forty turkeys were at the baker's, to be ready at
a little before twelve o'clock, the dinner-hour, and in time for the
carvers, who were to fill the four hundred plates for the expected
guests.

At eleven o'clock Edith and her father went down to the chapel on the
first floor, where the children had assembled for the morning exercises,
that were to continue for an hour.

Edith had a place near the reading-desk where she could see the
countenances of all those children who were sitting side by side in
row after row and filling every seat in the room, a restless, eager,
expectant crowd, half disciplined and only held quiet by the order and
authority they had learned to respect. Such faces as she looked into!
In scarcely a single one could she find anything of true childhood, and
they were so marred by suffering and evil! In vain she turned from one
to another, searching for a sweet, happy look or a face unmarked by pain
or vice or passion. It made her heart ache. Some were so hard and brutal
in their expression, and so mature in their aspect, that they seemed
like the faces of debased men on which a score of years, passed in
sensuality and crime, had cut their deep deforming lines, while others
were pale and wasted, with half-scared yet defiant eyes, and thin,
sharp, enduring lips, making one tearful to look at them. Some were
restless as caged animals, not still for a single instant, hands moving
nervously