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In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and youths were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind of kennel where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down at night. Divers of them had been there some long time. 'Are they never going away? was the natural inquiry.
Taken by itself, taken neat, as it were, this repartee might have been insufficient to act as a casus belli, but by a merciful dispensation of Providence the senior day-room elected to laugh at the remark, and to laugh loudly. Monk also laughed. Not, however, for long. The next moment the Bishop had darted in, knocked his feet from under him, and dragged him to the door.
It was contrary to the etiquette of the House for a study man to enter the senior day-room, and as a rule the senior day-room resented it. As to all appearances they were not resenting it now, the obvious conclusion was that something was going on which ought to cease. The Bishop opened the door.
All alone in a strange school, where they probably played hopscotch, with a house-master who offered one cups of tea after one's journey and talked about chamfered plinths and apses. It was a little hard. He strayed about, finding his bearings, and finally came to a room which he took to be the equivalent of the senior day-room at a Wrykyn house. Everywhere else he had found nothing but emptiness.
... "She had the bedroom and bath opening from the other side of Mr. Allan's day-room ready for you, madam. It's been ready several weeks." "Has it?" said Phyllis. It was like Mrs. Harrington, that careful planning of even where she should be put. "Is Mr. Harrington in his day-room now?" For some reason she did not attempt to give herself, she did not want to see him again just now.
Round the walls were various ornaments of the senior day-room in attitudes of expectant attention, being evidently content to play the part of 'friends and retainers', leaving the leading parts in the hands of Monk and his colleague. 'Hullo, said the Bishop, 'what's going on? 'It's all right, old chap, said Monk, grinning genially, 'we're only having an execution.
As Thomas sat by the window of the junior day-room reading a magazine, and deeply interested in it, there fell upon his face such a rapt, angelic expression that the sight of it, silhouetted against the window, roused Master P. Burge, his fellow-Blackburnite, as it had been a trumpet-blast.
Pillingshot wriggled uncomfortably. "Left your music at home?" said Scott. "Never mind, then. Perhaps it's all for the best. What are those? Still muffins? Hand me another. After all, one must keep one's strength up. You can have one if you like." Pillingshot's face brightened. He became more affable. He chatted. "There's rather a row on downstairs," he said. "In the junior day-room."
The loneliness and weariness of workhouse existence passed by the aged poor, separated from kinsfolk and friends, in "the day-room of a London workhouse," have been lately set forth by Miss Edith Sellers, in the pages of the Nineteenth Century, with a pathetic incisiveness not less striking than that of the following passage from the Eighteenth Letter of Crabbe's Borough:
Monk was coming downstairs from his study with Danvers, and Farnie was leaving the fags' day-room. 'See that kid? said Danvers. 'That's the chap I was telling you about. Gethryn's uncle, you know. 'Not really? Let's cultivate him.
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