“I think, William, Miss Vogdes has the maternal instinct largely developed,” looking at her face and the shape of her head as a naturalist would at a new bug.  “You could find work for her in here,” unlatching the gate of the Reformatory school.  “She could serve humanity here just as well as if she had more—­more—­well, we’ll say stamina.”

“Precisely what I thought of,” cheerfully.  “You’ve hit the nail on the head about her, Maria.”  He was a peaceable, affectionate fellow at bottom.  He had never hoped that his sister would tolerate Kitty, and women’s squabbles in a family he abhorred, like every other man; and here she was extending a hospitable greeting, finding work for Kitty already. Io triumphe!

“Suppose you show Miss Vogdes the institution, sister?” he said, rubbing his eye-glasses and putting them on again in a flutter of pleasure and cordiality.

Miss Muller nodded authoritatively, and he fell into the background.

“You’ll observe, Miss Vogdes,” with a laugh and shrug, “Berrytown has given its best of aesthetic instincts here:  five square stories painted white, with green shutters; pebble walks; six straight evergreens to testify of the Beautiful.  Inside—­here we are!  Parlor:  yellow-pine floors, spotless; green paper blinds in the windows, that hang stirless the year round.  This is the kitchen:  white boards, shining caldrons.  William, show the soup.”

Mr. Muller gravely held up a ladleful:  “Beef and cabbage.  To each child we allow per diem three parts of animal food, three purely farinaceous, four vegetable.  The proper scale, I hold, of healthful nourishment,” putting back the ladle.  He had not spilled a drop.

“Dining-room,” continued Miss Muller:  “more white boards; shining tin plates; these three hundred little figures in blue jeans ranged against the wall are the—­the patients.  Now observe.”  Mr. Muller rapped once, they raised their hands; twice, they clasped them; three times, they rattled off the Lord’s Prayer; the next moment they were shoveling their soup into their mouths in silence.

“Miss Vogdes does not approve their religious teaching, William.  You see,” turning to her, “how they need a real motherly care. You could give it to them.”

But Kitty, who perhaps did “want stamina,” and who was more of a child than any before her, made no answer.  Vice and disease faced her as never before:  those hundreds of hungry eyes fenced her in.

“Are you sick?” said Mr. Muller anxiously, seeing her face.  “It is the smell of the soup, perhaps.  Come out of this.  Let me pass, Maria.  You forget how foolishly tender her life has been:  she never probably looked at crime before.  Come out to the fresh air.”