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“You’ll go for to kick it over, if you don’t mind,” said a small boy near her, referring to the mug.

“You mind your own business–Imperence!” replied Martha, sharply. It must be remembered that she was a child of the “slums.”

“Wot a cheeky little shrimp it is,” retorted the boy, with as much of a grin as a stuffed mouth would admit of.

Just then Matilda Westlake, having finished a hymn, and being mindful of the little toe, came quietly down to where Martha was sitting.

“Why, dear child,” she said, in surprise, “have they not given you something to eat?”

“Oh yes, ma’am. But I’ve–“

She was going to say, “I’ve eaten it,” but gran’father had so earnestly impressed on her mind the sinfulness of telling lies, that she felt constrained to hesitate, and, with a trembling lip, finished by saying she had eaten some of it.

“And what has become of the rest, dear?”

“Please, miss, she’ve putt it in ‘er pocket,” said “Imperence” promptly.

Without noticing the remark, Matty moved so as to make herself an effectual screen between Imperence and Martha.

“Tell me, dear child,” she said, stooping low and putting a gentle hand on Martha’s shoulder, “are you not hungry?”

“Oh yes,” answered the little one quickly; “I’m so ‘ungry. You can’t think ‘ow ‘ungry; but I promised to–to–“

At this point her lip quivered, and she began to cry quietly.

“Stay, don’t tell me anything more about it, dear, till you have breakfasted. Here, eat this before you say another word.”

She took a roll from the basket of a passing “worker” and put it in the child’s hand. Nothing loth, Martha began to eat and drink, mingling a warm tear or two with the hot soup, and venting a sob now and then as she proceeded.

Watching her for a few moments, Matty left her.

In passing she stopped and said to Imperence, in a whisper of terrible intensity, “If you speak to that girl again you shall have–no more.”

No more! To be “hanged by the neck till you are dead” would not have sounded so appalling just at that time. So Imperence collapsed.

It is not our purpose to go much further into the details of the feast. Suffice it to say that the poorest of the poor were there; that they were encouraged to eat as much as possible, and allowed to carry away what they could not eat, and there is reason to believe that, judging from the prominence of pockets, a considerable quantity found its way to hungry mouths which had been found incapable of attending the feast.

Among those who did great execution in the pocketing line was, as you may well believe, little Martha. Finding, to her ineffable joy, that there was no limit assigned to consumption, and that pocketing was not esteemed a sin, she proceeded, after stuffing herself, to stuff to overflowing the pocket with which she had previously wrestled, as already described, and then attempted to fill the pocket on the other side. She did so in utter and child-like forgetfulness of the fact that she had recently lost several small articles in consequence of the condition of that pocket, and her memory was not awakened until, having just completed the satisfactory filling of it, she beheld, or rather felt, the entire mass of edibles descending to the floor, proving that the pocket was indeed a very bottomless pit.

“Never mind, little one,” said Tom Westlake, coming forward at the moment, for he had just closed the meeting; “I’ll find a bag for you to put it in. I hope the toe is all right.”

“Oh yes, sir, thank you, it’s quite well,” answered Martha, blushing through the dirt on her face, as she eyed the fallen food anxiously.

“Tell me now, little one,” continued Tom, sitting down on the bench and drawing the child gently towards him, “whom are you pocketing all these good things for?–not for yourself, I’m quite sure of that.”