d an inhabitant of Mile End.
Gratitude, responsiveness, imply health and energy, past or present.
The only constant defence which the poor have against such physical
conditions as those which prevailed at Mile End is apathy.

As they came down the dilapidated steps at the cottage door, Robert drew
in with avidity a long draught of the outer air.

'Ugh!' he said, with a sort of groan, 'that bedroom! Nothing gives
one such a sense of the toughness of human life as to see a child
recovering, actually recovering, in such a pestilential den! Father,
mother, grown up son, girl of thirteen, and grandchild--all huddled in a
space just fourteen feet square. Langham!' and he turned passionately on
his companion, 'what defence can be found for a man who lives in a place
like Murewell Hall, and can take money from human beings for the use of
a sty like that?'

'Gently, my friend. Probably the Squire, being the sort of recluse he
is, has never seen the place, or at any rate not for-years, and knows
nothing about it!'

'More shame for him!'

'True in a sense,' said Langham, a little dryly; 'but as you may want
hereafter to make excuses for your man, and he may give you occasion, I
wouldn't begin by painting him to yourself any blacker than need be.'

Robert laughed, sighed, and acquiesced. 'I am a hot-headed, impatient
kind of creature at the best of times,' he confessed. 'They tell me that
great things have been done for the poor round here in the last twenty
years. Something has been done, certainly. But why are the old ways, the
old evil neglect and apathy, so long, so terribly long in dying! This
social progress of ours we are so proud of is a clumsy limping jade at
best!'

They prowled a little more about the hamlet, every step almost revealing
some new source of poison and disease. Of their various visits, however,
Langham remembered nothing afterward but a little scene in a miserable
cottage, where they found a whole family partly gathered round the
mid-day meal. A band of puny black-eyed children were standing or
sitting at the table. The wife, confined of twins three weeks before,
sat by the fire, deathly pale, a 'bad leg' stretched out before her on
some improvised support, one baby on her lap and another dark-haired
bundle asleep in a cradle beside her. There was a pathetic, pinched
beauty about the whole family. Even the tiny twins were comparatively
shapely; all the other children had delicate, transparent skins,