felt very sorry for the one and a little resentful towards the other, but
the sentimental desire to see the painting-room where her mother used to
work prevailed, and with her heart full of recollections she followed the
party to the ovens.

Their way thither led them around the building, and they passed through
many workrooms. These were generally clean, airy spaces, with big rafters
and whitewashed walls. Sometimes a bunch of violets, a book, or a newspaper
lying on the table, suggested an absent owner, and a refined countenance
was sought for in the different groups of women. There was also a
difference in the hats and shawls, and it was easy to tell which belonged
to the young girls, which to the mothers of families. Everyone looked
healthy and contented. All were nice-looking, as Lennox continued to
assert, and all worked industriously at their numberless employments, one
of the most curious of which consisted in knocking the roughness off the
finished earthenware.

A dozen women sat in a circle; above them and around them were piles of
dinner-services of all kinds. Each held with one hand a piece of crockery
on her knees, whilst with a chisel she chopped away at it as if it could
not by any possibility be broken. As may easily be imagined, the noise in
this warehouse was bewildering.

Through this room and others, up and down many narrow staircases, the
visiting party went, the guide leading, the three black clergymen
following, Kate lingering behind with Mr. Lennox until they came to the
ovens. The entrance was from an immense corridor, prolonged by shadow and
divided down the middle by presses full of drying earthenware, the smell of
which was not, however, as strong as in the platemakers' place, and the
difference was noticed by the clergyman with the cough. He said he was not