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to set to his creditors, lead off, turn the Commissioners, and
right and left back to his professional pursuits), that wonderful
progress was made. Indeed the dancing-master was so proud of it,
and so wishful to display it before he left to a few select friends
among the collegians, that at six o'clock on a certain fine
morning, a minuet de la cour came off in the yard--the college-
rooms being of too confined proportions for the purpose--in which
so much ground was covered, and the steps were so conscientiously
executed, that the dancing-master, having to play the kit besides,
was thoroughly blown.

The success of this beginning, which led to the dancing-master's
continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor
child to try again. She watched and waited months for a
seamstress. In the fulness of time a milliner came in, and to her
she repaired on her own behalf.

'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' she said, looking timidly round the
door of the milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed: 'but I
was born here.'

Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the
milliner sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and said, just as the
dancing-master had said:

'Oh! You are the child, are you?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'I am sorry I haven't got anything for you,' said the milliner,
shaking her head.

'It's not that, ma'am. If you please I want to learn needle-work.'

'Why should you do that,' returned the milliner, 'with me before
you? It has not done me much good.'

'Nothing--whatever it is--seems to have done anybody much good who
comes here,' she returned in all simplicity; 'but I want to learn
just the same.'

'I am afraid you are so weak, you see,' the milliner objected.

'I don't think I am weak, ma'am.'

'And you are so very, very little, you see,' the milliner objected.

'Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,' returned the Child of
the Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that unfortunate defect of
hers, which came so often in her way. The milliner--who was not
morose or hard-hearted, only newly insolvent--was touched, took her
in hand with goodwill, found her the most patient and earnest of
pupils, and made her a cunning work-woman in course of time.

In course of time, and in the very self-same course of time, the
Father of the Marshalsea gradually developed a new flower of
character. The more Fatherly he grew as to the Marshalsea, and the
more dependent he became on the contributions of his changing
family, the greater stand he made by his forlorn gentility. With
the same hand that he pocketed a collegian's half-crown half an
hour ago, he would wipe away the tears that streamed over his
cheeks if any reference were made to his daughters' earning their
bread. So, over and above other daily cares, the Child of the
Marshalsea had always upon her the care of preserving the genteel
fiction that they were all idle beggars together.

The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family
group--ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and

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