"Less noise here, if you please. Meg, you know you have been forbidden to sing at bedtime. Now, my dears, don't cry any more; get undressed and into bed at once; you'll see your mother in the morning."
"Why are you here, duckies? Father run away and left you all starving?" asked an older woman who had been walking about the room administering medicine, opening windows, and generally doing the work of wardswoman.
"Yes," sobbed the children; "they've put mother in another room, and we are so frightened."
"There, stop crying, my dears," said Priscilla; "come and look at my baby."
"What a lot of babies!" said the elder girl. "Have all your husbands run away and left you?"
"Oh, Lor'! child, don't ask questions; get into bed, quick." The children donned their pink flannelette nightgowns and then knelt down beside their beds, making the sign of the Cross. There was deep silence, some of the girls began to cry, "Irish Biddy" threw herself on her knees and recited the Rosary with sobs and gasps.
"Oh, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, Whiter than snow, whiter than snow,"
sang a blear-eyed girl in a raucous, tuneless chant.
Musical Meg put her fingers to her ears. "You've got the wrong tune, Rosie; listen, I'll hum it to you," but finding her attempts after musical correctness were unheeded, she started herself the _Qui habitat_ of the _Compline_ office.
"Good Lord, girls!" came the shrill voice of Daisy Crabtree; "what's up now? It gives me the hump to hear you sniffing and sobbing over your psalm tunes; let's have something cheerful with a chorus: ''Allo! 'allo! 'allo! it's a different girl again----'"
"Oh! do be quiet, Daisy; wait until the poor little things has said their prayers," came the gentle voice of Priscilla.
"'Different eyes and a different nose----'"
"Stow that, Daisy, or I'll drive those teeth you're so proud of down your throat," said the tall wardswoman.
Temperance Hunt (known to her associates as "Tipsy Tempie," all unconscious of the classical dignity of the oxymoron) was a clear starcher and ironer, so skilled in the trade that it was said she could command her own terms in West End laundries, but like many "shirt and collar hands," she was given to bouts of terrible drunkenness, during which she would pawn her furniture and her last rag for gin. Then she would retire to the workhouse for a time, get some clothes out of the charitable, sign another pledge, and come forth again, to the comfort and peace of many households--for the wearers of Tempie's shirts dressed for dinner without a murmur, and "never said a single 'damn.'"