One thing shed a light over the days as it approached, and then left them dark till the hope of its return brought a dubious twilight.  Once a month, on a Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Reeve had promised to come and see the two children.  She might have come oftener, for considerable allowance was made for family affection.  But it was difficult enough in four weeks to lay by the few pence which would take her down to the suburb.  Punctually at two she was at the gate, and till four she might sit with the children in the lodge.  Not much was said.  They clung to each other in silence.  Or she undid the boy’s stiff waistcoat, and looked at his grey shirt, and tried to accustom herself to her Lizzie’s short hair and heavy blue dress.  Many others came too, and sat in the same room—­eloquent drunkards appealing to heaven, exuberant relatives with apples and sweets, unsatisfied till the children howled in answer to their pathos, girls half-ashamed to be seen, and quiet working mothers.  As four struck, good-bye was said, and with Lizzie’s crying in her ears Mrs. Reeve walked blindly back through the lines of suburban villas to the station.  Twice she came, and, counting the days and weeks, the children had made themselves ready for the third great Saturday.  Carefully washed and brushed, they sat in their separate day-rooms, and waited.  Two o’clock struck, but no message came.  All the afternoon they waited, sick with disappointment and loneliness.  At last, seeing the matron go by, Alfred said:  “Please, mum, my mother ain’t come to-day.”

“Not come?” she answered.  “Oh, that is a cruel mother!  But they’re all the same.  Each time, sure as fate, there’s somebody forgotten, so you’re no worse off than anybody else.  Look, here’s a nice big sweet for you instead!  Oh yes, I’ll tell them about your little sister.  What’s your name, did you say?”

As he went out along the corridor, Alfred came upon Looney hiding behind an iron column, and crying to himself.  “Why, what’s the matter with you?” he asked.

“My mother ain’t been to see me,” whined Looney, with unrestrained sobs; “and Clem says ’e’s wrote to tell ’er she’d best not come no more, ’cos I’m so bad.”

His mother had been for years at the school herself, and after serving in a brief series of situations, had calculated the profit and loss, and gone on the streets.

“Mine didn’t come neither,” said Alfred.  “Matron says they’re all like that.  But never you mind, ’ere’s a nice sweet for you instead.”

He took the sweet out of his own mouth.  Looney received it cautiously, and his great watery eyes gazed at Alfred with the awe of a biologist who watches a new law of nature at work.

Next day after dinner Lizzie and Alfred met in the hall, as brothers and sisters were allowed to meet for an hour on Sundays.  They sat side by side with their backs to the long tablecloths left on for tea.

“She never come,” said Alfred after the growing shyness of meeting had begun to pass off.