Lily observed that when they were in the
street she always held her very tight by the
hand, and looked about her a great deal, and
that once she told her, if any one tried to take
her away, to allow herself to be torn in ten
thousand pieces first.

"Not that there is any danger," she continued,
more to herself than to Lily, " not that
I am afraid. Oh no. I am strong— strong
enough for ten armed men. But bah! let them
come. What nonsense. My monsters are
abroad. Are you hungry," she went on, looking
down at the little girl.

Lily, accustomed to the early and regular
meals of Rhododendron House, answered that
she would like to have her dinner, if the lady
pleased.

"Dinner!" repeated the lady. " Absurdity!
You are to dine by and-by with the gentleman.
You must wait. Come, little glutton, and have
another cake."

She took the little glutton into another pastry-cook's,
and presented her, as heretofore, with
a Bath bun. But when Lily had picked the
caraway seeds and the spiculæ of lump sugar
off the sticky varnished surface, she found she
had no appetite for the sweet, saffron-coloured
dough beneath. She wanted her little plate of
meat, and the potatoes that mashed up so nicely
in the gravy. She longed for a slice of the plain
school-pudding, at which the big girls used to
grumble so, and to which they applied such
opprobrious epithets. Seeing her distaste, the
lady snatched away the Bath bun, and cast it
with great contempt on the counter, and then
ordered some ox-tail soup for Lily, but it
was so hot that it burnt her mouth, and so
peppery that it brought tears into her eyes, to
say nothing of its being thick, and slab, and
greasy; so the end of it was that the ox-tail soup
shared the fate of the bun, and the lady, in a
fume, pushed Lily before her into the street
again.

"Intolerable little plague!" she cried, furiously.
"What am I to do with you? Comport
yourself sagely, or you shall be given to the
black man. Entends-tu?"

A buxom mamma in flame-coloured silk and
a chinchilla tippet, who was passing with flve
little children laughing and prattling round her
in noisy glee— they had just corne out of the
Adelaide, and were bound for the Industrious
Fleas— looked up with surprise as she heard
the voice of the handsome savage woman who
had dominion over Lily. Like a prudent hen,
she gathered her chicks around her in a kind of
nervous tremor, lest unkindness should be contagious.

"Blessings on us all!" murmured the buxom
flame-coloured mamma, as Lily and her monitress
went on their way, the latter scowling. " What
a Fury that woman looks! How cruelly she
spoke to that innocent little darling. Priscilla,,
my love, mind the crossing."

It was a very dangerous crossing— from the
Golden Cross to Hungerford. Metropolitan
improvements have since diminished its perils; but,
in those days it was a fearful ford. That day
there was a man run over. Lily could only hear
a yell, and see the rush of people to the spot,
and a rapidly formed crowd with a policeman
cleaving his way through it; but when the
ranks of the throng opened and they came out
carrying something covered with a tarpaulin,
and the jolly red face of the man— a van driver,
who had unwittingly done the mischief — turn,
high up on his box, a yellowish white, as the
crowd cried out that somebody was killed, Lily
turned quite sick with terror, and had she been
old enough to swoon would have fainted on the
spot. She would have run away; but the
lady's grasp was tighter than ever; and the
lady herself seemed grimly interested in the
catastrophe. She scanned the burden they
were taking to Charing-Cross Hospital; she
questioned the policeman; and but for Lily's
agonised entreaties that they might go away, she
would have crossed the road to the scene of the
accident.

They went into a hackney-coach after this;
and the lady ordered the driver to proceed to
Baker-street. Lily was taken to see Madame
Tussaud's famous exhibition of waxwork. Old
Madame Tussaud herself was alive in those
days, and a very wonderful old lady Lily thought
her, in her black silk bonnet and hood, handing
about those inevitable bills at the door. And
then was there not Mr. Cobbett, looking so
remarkably like life, with his broad-brimmed
hat, and his spectacles, and his placid face, and
breathing hard, like a benevolent grampus? And
the recumbent lady with the black lace veil, whose
bosom rose and fell by clockwork? And were
there not the kings and queens in velvet and
sham diamonds, looking quite as brilliant as real
ones? And the cavaliers in armour, and M. de
Voltaire with his shrivelled face, and the old
coquette in her hoop and brocade? Lily was in
ecstasies, and for a time forgot about the poor
rnan who had been run over. Here were all
Mangnall's questions, answered in the most
splendid manner without the trouble of learning
a single lesson.

The Napoleon Museum was not then in existence;
but the Chamber of Horrors was already
one of the lions of London. 'Twas a strange
place to take a little school-girl, out for a holiday,
into; but the strange lady paid the extra sixpence
— I don't know whether they admit children, now
— and they went inside, and supped full of horrors.
That horrible guillotine. That dismal cavern
where the royal victims of revolutionary ferocity
bore their captivity with such dignified resignation
— in waxwork. That appalling torso in the
ensanguined shirt. That gloomy dock full of
murderers. Bishop and Williams were there,
and Greenacre and Courvoisier; but it was too
early yet for Goulds, and Hockers, and Mannings.
Lily had not been long in the Chamber of
Horrors before she began to think of the man
who had been run over. The air of the show
seemed hot and thick. She could scarcely
breathe. The glass eyes glared upon her. The