You'll bring home the small-pox or something worse." Neither Edith nor her father made any reply, and there fell a silence on the group that was burdensome to all.

Mrs.Dinneford felt it most heavily, and after the lapse of a few minutes withdrew from the room.
"A good dinner to four hundred hungry children, some of them half starved," said Edith as her mother shut the door.

"I shall enjoy the sight as much as they will enjoy the feast." A little after ten o'clock on the next morning, Mr.Dinneford and Edith took their way to the mission-school in Briar street.

They found from fifteen to twenty ladies and gentlemen already there, and at work helping to arrange the tables, which were set in the two long upper rooms.

There were places for nearly four hundred children, and in front of each was an apple, a cake and a biscuit, and between every four a large mince pie.