The second bite, ten minutes later, caused Sarah Brown to be tired and distrustful of a room that had no smile.  Her eyes turned to seek the hidden Joke beyond the limits of that lamentable room.  There was a spring-coloured tree in the school-ground opposite, and above the tree a rough blue and silver sky contradicted all the doctrines preached in offices.  There was in the wind something of the old raw simplicity and mirth that always haunts the sea, and penetrates inland only on rare spring days.  The high white clouds crossed the sky like galleons, like old stories out of the innocent Eden-like past of the sea, before she learnt the ways of steam and secret killing.  Old names of ships came to Sarah Brown’s mind ...  Castle-of-Comfort ...  Cloud-i’-the-Sun....

“I am doing wrong,” said Sarah Brown.  She took a third bite.

And then she felt the spirit of the Naughty Poor in the room; there was laughter, as of the registered, in the ears of the Registrar.  It is not really permissible for the Naughty Poor to invade offices which exist to do them good.  The way of charity lies through suspicion, but the suspicion of course must be all on one side.  We have to judge the criminal unheard; if we called him as a witness in his case we might become sentimental.  The Charity Society may be imagined as keeping two lists of crimes, a short one for Registrars and Workers, and a very long one for the registered.  High on the list of crimes possible to Registrars and Workers is Sentimentality.  It is sentimental to feel personal affection for a Case, or to give a child of the Naughty Poor a penny without full enquiry, or to say “A-goo” to a grey pensive baby eating dirt on the pavement, or to acknowledge the right of a Case to ask questions sometimes instead of answering them, or to disapprove of spying and tale-bearing, or to believe any statement made by any one without an assured income, or to quote any part of the New Testament, or in fact to confuse in any way the ideas of charity and love.  Christ, who, by the way, unfortunately omitted to join any reputable philanthropic society, commanded seekers of salvation to be poor and to despise themselves.  But this was sentimental, and the Charity Society decrees that only the prosperous and the self-respectful shall deserve a hearing.

“I am sentimental,” said Sarah Brown to her Dog David in a broken voice.  She turned again to her enchanted sandwich.

There was increased laughter in the air, and through it she heard the hoarse and happy shouting of the sparrows in the spring-coloured tree opposite.  Sparrows are the ideal Naughty Poor, the begging friars, the gypsies of the air, they claim alms as a right and as a seal of friendship; with their mouths full of your crumbs they share with you their innocent and vulgar wit, they give you in return no I.O.U., and no particulars for your case-paper.  When they have got from you all that you will give, they wink and giggle and shake the dust of your window-sill from off their feet.