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Albert's father brought his morning newspaper lists from the shop and, with Olive and Clara, we went through them with the cards. Of course all sorts of things had happened since they had been prepared. People had moved, died and been born. Houses had been built, had fallen down or been split in two, and there were other snags.

"Poor Old Lady Rose," said Doey, pouncing on a card. "Four rooms, one in family, so three children. What would she do with three children? The house is no more than a barn. She's over eighty, practically bedridden, and Mrs. Rich next door goes in to look at her. Three children would kill her. Count her out. Someone else must take her lot. I wouldn't mind some little old boys."

Little old boys were in demand. The distribution of the children began to move with speed, with Doey as a sort of rubicund stork.

In the last twenty years an interest in children has too often been thought sentimental, but Auburn people are not particularly fashionable and the absence of young stock has got on many people's nerves, so that the prospect of a hundred and twenty young things bursting the school again and filling the streets was not altogether an unpleasant idea, even if they belonged to somebody else.