brushed and combed the silver-haired terrier, who looked abjectly
depressed whilst this was doing, and preposterously proud when it was
done. She washed her own hair, and studied her Sunday-school lesson for
the morrow whilst it was drying. She spread a colored quilt at the foot
of her white one for the terrier to sleep on--a slur which he always
deeply resented.

Then she went to bed, and slept as one ought to sleep on Saturday night,
who is bound to be at the Sunday School by 9.15 on the following
morning, with a clear mind on the Rudiments of the Faith, the history of
the Prophet Elisha, and the destinations of each of the parish
magazines.



SCENE II.


Fatherless--motherless--homeless!

A little work-house-boy, with a swarthy face and tidily-cropped black
hair, as short and thick as the fur of a mole, was grubbing, not quite
so cleverly as a mole, in the work-house garden.

He had been set to weed, but the weeding was very irregularly performed,
for his eyes and heart were in the clouds, as he could see them over the
big boundary wall. For there--now dark against the white, now white
against the gray--some Air Tumbler pigeons were turning somersaults on
their homeward way, at such short and regular intervals that they seemed
to be tying knots in their lines of flight.