“Sally!  Hear me, my dear.  My entreaty is for no help in the future.  It applies to what is past.  It is only to be told in two words.”

“There!  This is worse and worse,” cries Sally, “supposing that I understand what two words you mean.”

“You do understand.  What are the names they have given my poor baby?  I ask no more than that.  I have read of the customs of the place.  He has been christened in the chapel, and registered by some surname in the book.  He was received last Monday evening.  What have they called him?”

Down upon her knees in the foul mud of the by-way into which they have strayed—­an empty street without a thoroughfare giving on the dark gardens of the Hospital—­the lady would drop in her passionate entreaty, but that Sally prevents her.

“Don’t!  Don’t!  You make me feel as if I was setting myself up to be good.  Let me look in your pretty face again.  Put your two hands in mine.  Now, promise.  You will never ask me anything more than the two words?”

“Never!  Never!”

“You will never put them to a bad use, if I say them?”

“Never!  Never!”

“Walter Wilding.”

The lady lays her face upon the nurse’s breast, draws her close in her embrace with both arms, murmurs a blessing and the words, “Kiss him for me!” and is gone.

* * * * *

Day of the month and year, the first Sunday in October, one thousand eight hundred and forty-seven.  London Time by the great clock of Saint Paul’s, half-past one in the afternoon.  The clock of the Hospital for Foundling Children is well up with the Cathedral to-day.  Service in the chapel is over, and the Foundling children are at dinner.

There are numerous lookers-on at the dinner, as the custom is.  There are two or three governors, whole families from the congregation, smaller groups of both sexes, individual stragglers of various degrees.  The bright autumnal sun strikes freshly into the wards; and the heavy-framed windows through which it shines, and the panelled walls on which it strikes, are such windows and such walls as pervade Hogarth’s pictures.  The girls’ refectory (including that of the younger children) is the principal attraction.  Neat attendants silently glide about the orderly and silent tables; the lookers-on move or stop as the fancy takes them; comments in whispers on face such a number from such a window are not unfrequent; many of the faces are of a character to fix attention.  Some of the visitors from the outside public are accustomed visitors.  They have established a speaking acquaintance with the occupants of particular seats at the tables, and halt at those points to bend down and say a word or two.  It is no disparagement to their kindness that those points are generally points where personal attractions are.  The monotony of the long spacious rooms and the double lines of faces is agreeably relieved by these incidents, although so slight.