The forty turkeys were at the baker's, to be ready at a little before twelve o'clock, the dinner-hour, and in time for the carvers, who were to fill the four hundred plates for the expected guests.
At eleven o'clock Edith and her father went down to the chapel on the first floor, where the children had assembled for the morning exercises, that were to continue for an hour.
Edith had a place near the reading-desk where she could see the countenances of all those children who were sitting side by side in row after row and filling every seat in the room, a restless, eager, expectant crowd, half disciplined and only held quiet by the order and authority they had learned to respect.

Such faces as she looked into! In scarcely a single one could she find anything of true childhood, and they were so marred by suffering and evil! In vain she turned from one to another, searching for a sweet, happy look or a face unmarked by pain or vice or passion.

It made her heart ache.

Some were so hard and brutal in their expression, and so mature in their aspect, that they seemed like the faces of debased men on which a score of years, passed in sensuality and crime, had cut their deep deforming lines, while others were pale and wasted, with half-scared yet defiant eyes, and thin, sharp, enduring lips, making one tearful to look at them.

Some were restless as caged animals, not still for a single instant, hands moving nervously and bodies swaying to and fro, while others sat stolid and almost as immovable as stone, staring at the little group of men and women in front who were to lead them in the exercises of the morning.
At length one face of the many before her fixed the eyes of Edith.