and of insufficient
food. It took strong stimulants to rouse them: love, hate, jealousy,
whisky, battle, murder, and sudden death. Their conversation was
gross, and they were very immoral; but it is hardly necessary to say
so, for with men, women, children, and animals all crowded together in
such surroundings, and the morbid craving for excitement to which
people who have no comfort or wholesome interest in life fall a prey,
immorality is inevitable. It was the boast of the place that there
were no illegitimate children; it would have been a better sign if
there had been.

Mrs. Caldwell, true to her training, lived opposite to all this vice
and squalor, serenely indifferent to it. Anne, therefore, who knew
nothing about the management of children, and was not in any respect a
proper person to have the charge of them, had it all her own way in
the nursery: and her way was to do nothing that she could help. She
used to call the children in the morning, and then leave them to their
own devices. The moment they were awake, which was pretty soon, for
they were full of life, they began to batter each other with pillows,
dance about the room in their night-dresses, pitch tents with the
bed-clothes on the floor, and make noise enough to bring their mother
down upon them. Then Anne would be summoned and come hurrying up, and
help them to huddle on their clothes somehow. She never washed them,
but encouraged them to perform their own ablutions, which they did
with the end of a towel dipped in a jug. The consequence was they were
generally in a very dirty state. They took their meals with their
parents, and papa would notice the dirt eventually, and storm at mamma
in Italian, when words would ensue in a tone which made the children
quake. Then mamma would storm at Anne, for whom the children felt
sorry, and the result would be a bath, which they bore with fortitude,
for fear of getting Anne into further trouble. They even made good
resolutions about washing themselves, which they kept for a few days;
then, however, they began to shirk again, and had again to be
scrubbed. The resolutions of a child must be shored up by kindly
supervision, otherwise it is hardly likely that they will cement into
good habits.

Beth suffered from a continual sense of discomfort in those days for
want of proper attention. All her clothing fitted badly, and were
fastened on with anything that came to hand in the way of tape and
buttons; her hair wa