While the child went to find Mrs. Lumley I waited in the sitting-room. It was an empty, ugly place, with bare floors and whitewashed walls, the latter decorated, like those of the office, with framed scriptural texts. Its furniture consisted of several long, slat-bottomed settees and a single large rocking-chair which, crowded with children, was swinging noisily over the bare boards. At our entrance the chair stopped rocking, and one of the children climbed out.
It was Julia. She came promptly over to my side, while a half-dozen of the other children jumped off the benches and ran to the rocking-chair to squabble over the question of who should take the vacant place.
"Did yez have a row?" she asked eagerly. "Say, did yez?"
I evaded the question, thinking it neither advisable nor proper to satisfy the curiosity of the little mite. To divert her attention, I began questioning her about herself and her little companions—who were they, what were they, and how did they come to be here?
"Why, don't you know?" the little one asked, looking at me in amazement. "We're waifs!"
"Waifs! What sort of waifs?"
"Why, just waifs."
"But I didn't know this was an orphan-asylum," I said, looking about at the children sitting in rows of two and three upon the scattered settees.
"Oh, no, ma'am. We're not orfants," the child hastened to correct me; "we're just waifs."