CHAPTER X.PLAY IN THE UNDERWORLD.
It may seem a strange thing, but children do play in the underworld.
They have their own games and their times and seasons too! Yet no one can watch them as they play without experiencing feelings more or less pathetic.

There is something incongruous about it that may cause a smile, but there is also something that will probably cause a tear.
For their playgrounds are the gutters or the pavements.

Happy are the children when they can procure a spacious pavement, for in the underworld wide pavements are scarce; still narrow pavements and gutters are always to hand.
It is summer time, the holidays have come! No longer the hum, babble and shouts of children are heard in and around those huge buildings, the County Council schools.
The sun pours its rays into the unclean streets, the thermometer registers eighty in the shade.

Down from the top storey and other storeys of the blocks the children come, happy in the consciousness that for one month at least they will be free from school, without dodging the school attendance officer.
"Hop-scotch" season has commenced, and as if by magic the pavements of the narrow streets are covered with chalked lines, geometrical figures and numerals, and the mysterious word "tod" confronts you, stares at you, and puzzles you.
Who can understand the intricacies of "hop-scotch" or the fascination of "tod"?
None but the girls of the underworld.

Simple pleasures please them--a level pavement, a piece of chalk, a "pitcher," the sun overhead, dirt around, a few companions and non-troublesome babies, are their chief requirements; for few of these girls come out to play without the eternal baby.
Notice first, if you will, how deftly these foster-mothers handle the babies; their very method tells of long-continued practice.