"MANY ARE GOING BACK TO MISERABLE DENS."
They cannot all be saved from the evil environment that awaits them, but they come day after day to the schools, and there they fall under an influence which, if they are not inherently bad, will stand them in good stead through all their lives.
We watch the little ones as with the light-heartedness of childhood they trip away, some to the meal which loving hands have prepared for them, others to crowd and clamour at the doors of the mission-house, where the free meal stands between them and the hunger pain, and then we turn into a street that bore formerly so ill a name that the authorities changed it, to remove the stigma of the address from the few decent people in it.
In five minutes we are once more on the beaten track and in the heart of Royal and aristocratic Kensington.
Copyright, 1904, by W. W. Jacobs, in the United States of America.
CHAPTER IX.
HE church bells were ringing for morning service as Mr. Vickers, who had been for a stroll with Mr. William Russell and a couple of ferrets, returned home to breakfast. Contrary to custom, the small front room and the kitchen were both empty, and breakfast, with the exception of a cold herring and the bitter remains of a pot of tea, had been cleared away.