By her side was a little girl just beginning to learn the work, whose employment it was to paper wires and make ‘centres.’  This toil always results in blistered fingers, and frequent was the child’s appeal to her neighbour for sympathy.

‘It’ll be easier soon,’ said the latter, on one of these occasions, bending her head to speak in a low voice.  ’You should have seen what blisters I had when I began.’

’It’s all very well to say that.  I can’t do no more, so there Oh, when’ll it be five o’clock?’

‘It’s a quarter to.  Try and go on, Annie.’

Five o’clock did come at length, and with it twenty minutes’ rest for tea.  The rule at Whitehead’s was, that you could either bring your own tea, sugar, and eatables, or purchase them here from a forewoman; most of the workers chose to provide themselves.  It was customary for each ‘party’ to club together, emptying their several contributions of tea out of little twists of newspaper into one teapot.  Wholesome bustle and confusion succeeded to the former silence.  One of the learners, whose turn it was to run on errands, was overwhelmed with commissions to a chandler’s shop close by; a wry-faced, stupid little girl she was, and they called her, because of her slowness, the ‘funeral horse.’  She had strange habits, which made laughter for those who knew of them; for instance, it was her custom in the dinner-hour to go apart and eat her poor scraps on a doorstep close by a cook-shop; she confided to a companion that the odour of baked joints seemed to give her food a relish.  From her present errand she returned with a strange variety of dainties—­ for it was early in the week, and the girls still had. coppers in their pockets; for two or three she had purchased a farthing’s-worth of jam, which she carried in paper.  A bite of this and a taste of that rewarded her for her trouble.

The quiet-mannered girl whom we were observing took her cup of tea from the pot in which she had a share, and from her bag produced some folded pieces of bread and butter.  She had begun her meal, when there came and sat down by her a young woman of very different appearance—­our friend, Miss Peckover.  They were old acquaintances; but when we first saw them together it would have been difficult to imagine that they would ever sit and converse as at present, apparently in all friendliness.  Strange to say, it was Clem who, during the past three years, had been the active one in seeking to obliterate disagreeable memories.  The younger girl had never repelled her, but was long in overcoming the dread excited by Clem’s proximity.  Even now she never looked straight into Miss Peckover’s face, as she did when speaking with others; there was reserve in her manner, reserve unmistakable, though clothed with her pleasant smile and amiable voice.

‘I’ve got something to tell you, Jane,’ Clem began, in a tone inaudible to those who were sitting near.  ’Something as’ll surprise you.’