"Now Joe, he had the young men's class in the Sunday-school (all of 'em who weren't too high up in world to be taught by the sweep), and one day I was looking in at a foundry as I passed, when a young man who was standing out at the door said to me, 'Have you heard about Joe?'
"'No!' I said, rather startled, for he's a frail old man at the best,'What about him?'
"'Oh, it's nothing wrong with himself,' he said, 'but a week ago when he was going out in the early morning—last Saturday was wet, wasn't it?—he found one of them poor street girls fallen down in a faint a few yards away from his house. He called the missis, and they got her into the kitchen and gave her a cup of tea and put her to bed, and she'll never get up again, it seems. She was in a consumption too bad for them to take her at the hospital, so Joe's keeping her till she wants it no more.'
"I said good-bye to the young man and set off straight to see Joe. It was afternoon, so he was in when I got there. He didn't say much, but we went in to see the girl (she'd got the bed, and the missis slept on the sofa and Joe in the armchair), a poor, breathless, young thing, very near to death. I began to talk to her of the love of our Saviour, but she stopped me. 'Nobody's ever lovedme!' she said, 'nobody'll care if I die or not. I never believed there was any kindness in the world till I met these two.' We left her gasping there and went into the kitchen.
"'Poor lost lamb,' said Joe, 'them's sad words to hear.'
"'Sadder to feel they're true about so many others as well,' I said. 'But, Joe, be open with me,' I said, 'have you spent your savings on this poor soul?'
"'Yes!' he said, 'all but a few shillings. She must have milk and nourishment, you know.'
"'Yes, I know that,' I said, 'and for the present I can't help you, but you mustn't be allowed to spend all you've saved.'
"'Nay,' he said, 'it was a bitter cross the Lord of Glory carried for my sins. I can at least do this for one of His lost ones.'
"I knew he'd say that, or something like it, but in my own mind I'd determined to get it back again from somewhere for him, but you'll hear how I was prevented. I noticed that he looked a bit tired and thin as I went out, and I said to him, 'You're not looking very grand! You must take care of yourself too."
"'No! I don't feel very well,' he said. 'I've been feeling my age a bit lately,' he said laughing.
"'I'll look in to-morrow again,' I said as I went away, and about the same time next day I went back to find him sitting still on one side of the fireplace and the wife on the other. The girl had died suddenly in the night. They'd got the photograph of the little grandchildren, and I could see the old woman had been crying.
"'We shan't see them in this world now,' said Joe.
"I thought he was considering the money and began to talk.
"'No!' he said, 'it isn't that. The money was a bit of a sacrifice at the time, but I can see now why He asked me for it, and how thankful I am, as things have turned out, that I didn't refuse to do that little thing for Him. After you'd gone yesterday,' he went on, 'I felt so poorly that when the doctor came to see that poor girl I told him what I felt like. He looked a bit queer at first, and then he said:
"'"Well, Joe," he said, "I know very well that you're not afraid of death, so I won't beat about the bush," he said.
"'Thank you, doctor,' I said.
"'"Of course," he said, "I can't be certain, but I'm afraid it's cancer, and I can only say that I'll make it as easy for you as I can." He's a kind man, Mr Charter, though he's reckoned rough. Well, you can imagine how my first feeling was of thankfulness that I'd been kept in the love of God, and not held back for my own pleasure the money he was needing.Heknew, you see, that I shouldn't want it, and he sent that poor girl to be looked after by someone as had money to spare.
'"I'll bless the Hand that guided,I'll bless the Heart that planned,When throned where glory dwelleth,In Immanuel's Land."
So my summons is come, Mr Charter, though I'd no idea it was so near.'
"There's not a great deal you can say at such times, and my heart was very full as I listened to him, though I knew that it was well with him. I'm not going to tell you about the way he went through the valley, beautiful though it was, but I'll tell you just this before I sit down. Those young men of Joe's Sunday class got together and talked, and though they were young working-men with not much of a wage, they each gave sixpence a week and the old man had ten shillings a week as long as he lived, and every time he got the ten shillings he'd cry, and say, that he didn't know anybody in the world who'd had so much kindness shown to them all their life long ashehad."
The evangelist glanced round the chapel as the minister gave out the hymn. The heads of the boys were bent over their hymn-books, searching, with whispering, among the pages which they turned with wet thumbs. There was no apathy now. All the slow sun-burnt faces showed signs of having understood. One or two men sat with their eyes fixed on the evangelist as if waiting for more. A woman wiped her eyes and sighed. There was no restlessness. He had succeeded in making all these people, so different from the driven, excited, underfed congregation he constantly saw, think from beginning to end of his poor people, and had succeeded in making them sorry. He was content.
With that inarticulate desire to come into close contact with those who have moved them, which one knows among the poor, many of the congregation crowded round the pulpit to shake hands with the evangelist who leaned over the side, gripping hand after hand.
"A very good meeting," said the steward, looking round with an air of satisfaction.
"You've made me feel very small, sir," said a young man to the evangelist. "I've a good deal further to go yet."
"It's true of us all," replied the evangelist, shaking his hand fervently.
Anne Hilton had returned from the farmer to whom she had sold one of her pigs, and fed the animals, but had not taken off the linen pocket which she tied round her waist under her petticoat, and which held her money. She was trying to get at it now in the narrow pew. She knocked down a hymn-book and several pennies rolled under the feet of the out-going congregation. A young woman, with roses in her best hat, nudged another and laughed. A big boy stooped to pick up two, and restored them with a purple face. Anne replaced them in the linen pocket, shook her skirt down again, wrapped something in a piece of an old envelope, and beckoning the steward gave it to him, then followed the others through the blue square of the doorway. The steward approached the evangelist with a rather embarrassed smile.
"Our good sister's a bit queer," he said. "I don't know why she couldn't put it in the collection box."
The evangelist unwrapped the envelope and disclosed a sovereign. He paused.
"It's a big gift for a poor woman," he said in a moment. "She needed to make up her mind a bit first. The collection box came too soon."
"I've no doubt you're right," said the minister. "She's a good woman if a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part of her week's takings."
"I don't think she ought to have given it," said the steward's wife, who was waiting for her husband to drive her home. "She'll need help herself if she gives away like that. She alwaysmustbe different from other people."
Anne Hilton was walking home in the cool night air. The stars were so clear that they seemed to rest on the fields and tree-tops, and the rustle of the sleepless corn passed behind every hedge. She walked with a certain carefulness as of one who had unexpectedly escaped a physical danger; but the peril from which she was conscious of fleeing was spiritual. She had been threatened by avarice which had prompted her to give a small sum instead of the sovereign, and the evangelist had been right in his intuition. It had needed a good deal of "making up her mind" to give away the greater part of her earnings, even under the warmth of human appeal. She had conquered, but narrowly, and there was as much shame as satisfaction in her heart as she left the building, and more than all a great fear lest it should be talked about.
It was the first day of spring, the season of swift changes. For the first time the sky was lighter than the ground. Its brilliant clouds threw heavy shadows on the earth, fugitive shadows which ran with the warm wind, alert with colour. Nothing was quiet or hidden. There was not yet sufficient life to cover or screen. Everything that had budded had a world to itself and could be seen. Radiant, innocent, carolling, self-revealing, the movement and action of spring were in the earth. The running and glittering water, in winter so vivid a feature of the fields, had become insignificant in comparison with the splendid and vigorous sky. The noise of the wind, too, beat in one's ears louder than the water. One had no time for meditation. One was hurried as the wind, speeding as the sunshine. Yet the spring more than any other season is the time when one thinks of the generations that pass—perhaps from the very transitoriness of the visual images, their evanescence and momentary changes reminding one so of the dead. In autumn the passage is grave and decorous, like the advance of old age. In spring the image is lovely and momentary, like the bright passage of those dead young.
Anne Hilton looked out to see what kind of weather it was for the market, and with a sudden pang, she remembered her old father, and how, on such a day, he would totter to the open door, and there sit in the sunshine, grateful for the same warmth for which his old dog was grateful. When she came home from the market, she would make a wreath of white holly to put on the grave in which he rested. She thought of him vividly, of the pathos of his last illness from which she had vainly tried to drive the fear and soften the pain. She remembered his slow laugh, and the knocking of his stick on the floor. Memory is keener in bright sunshine than in the twilight, in vivid enjoyment more poignant than in melancholy. The churchyard, with its unvisited green mound and dwelling of the silent, became visible to Anne, and with it the dying out of joy which returns with that vision and memory. The house, too, was very quiet, as she drew in her head, with the stillness of a place once lived in and now empty. She had become accustomed to thinking of her father with tranquillity, satisfied to believe him at rest. Now the pain of loneliness returned with memory.
She harnessed the pony to the cart, and stowed her baskets safely under the seat. She was dressed in a purple merino skirt, kilted thickly, a black mantle, with a bead fringe, and an antiquated straw bonnet. Round her neck she had folded a man's linen handkerchief, and she had elastic-sided boots on her feet. She locked the door, and put the keys in her linen pocket tied round her waist under her skirt, and climbing up by means of the wheel, seated herself on the board which did duty as a seat, and took the reins. "Go on, Polly!" she said, and the pony, with a good deal of tossing of head and tail, set off obediently towards the high road. The clacking of its feet as it trotted on the hard road overwhelmed all other sounds. At the corner of the roads an old woman tending a cow nodded to her, and one or two field labourers raised themselves to see who was going past, remaining upright and staring longer than was necessary to satisfy their curiosity. At an open field-gate she had to wait until two heavy wagons, their wheels a mass of red, soft earth, had emerged, and turned in the direction of the town. She passed them, and for some time met no one. An advancing cart soon came in sight, accompanied by a great jangling of cans—a milk-cart returning from the station, having sent off its supplies to the town, now bringing back its empty cans. It was driven by a man whom Anne knew, and, instead of drawing to one side to pass, he reined in his horse as if to speak. "Good morning, Miss Hilton," he said. Anne checked her horse which had gone a few paces past, and turning in her seat to look over her shoulder, answered his greeting. The farmer's horse, impatient of this check on the way home, made several attempts to start, and at last, being held in by his master and scolded loudly, fell to pawing the ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned in his seat, and looking back at Anne said:
"I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you."
"Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment retaking them as the pony had started off.
"Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you when you go in there."
Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was speechless.
"She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again," said the farmer.
Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed dead.
"You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone else the responsibility of knowing about it also.
"I'll go up this afternoon," returned Anne, picking up the whip and flicking the pony. The farmer said "Good morning," and the rattle of milk cans once more filled the road as his horse set off at a gallop towards home.
When the business of the market was done, and Anne reached the Union, it was late in the afternoon. The roads outside the town were full of farmers returning from the market, of women walking with empty baskets, and an occasional small herd of cattle, being driven away from the terrifying experience of the town, by a purchaser. It was visiting-day at the Union, and here and there from the out-going stream, a man or woman of middle-age turned aside to enter the gate of the big brick building, in whose side-garden men were working, dressed in the bottle-green corduroy of the institution.
The presence of spring seemed to surge about the bare building. The trees planted about it were old, and belonged to an older building which protruded from the back; the weather-stained wall was old also, and the sunlight, older than either, shone with an urgent warmth beneath the heavy green shade. Rows of green blades were appearing in the border, set aside for ornament. The air, the clouds, the light near the ground, all seemed alive with the peculiar revival only felt in the spring.
Anne was admitted with others to the corridor, and left while they turned to the places they sought.
"She might see the Matron," said the porter, going along with a clatter of his feet to the far end of the corridor and knocking at a door. The Matron almost immediately emerged carrying a large key.
"It was very sad, wasn't it?" she began at once. "It happened night before last. It's a fine boy, though it's a bit too soon. One of the young women's got him." She led the way to the wide front stairs and began to ascend. Stopping at a half-open door, she entered and Anne followed.
It was a smaller room than the big ward, and sunny. It had an air of privacy, of comfort given by the sunshine only, for it was uncarpeted, and bare like the others. Four young women were sewing the stiff linsey skirts worn in the Union.
"How's the baby?" said the Matron.
"Asleep," replied a good-looking, blond young woman, rising willingly from her work and going over to the window, beneath which was a wicker-cradle covered with a shawl. She drew back the shawl, and Anne saw lying on one cheek on the pillow, the tiny, fuzzy, misshapen head and creased purple fist of a new baby. The confidence of that tiny breathing creature lying asleep seemed strange to Anne, who knew how desolate it was. It had already, as it were, taken possession of its place in the world, and had no intention of being dislodged.
"He's a healthy little thing," said the Matron.
"Greedy too," said the blond young woman, with a laugh.
"Could I look at Jane?" asked Anne.
"They fastened it up this afternoon," replied the Matron. "There'll be two funerals to-morrow. The other's an old man. You can see all there is to see."
She covered the baby and left the room, descending the same stairs, and going out of a side door. A strong smell of disinfectants came out into the warm garden as she opened the door of a glazed brick building. The blinds were down to keep out the sun. The building was lined with white glazed brick, and two straight burdens lay on a trestle-table.
"Eight o'clock to-morrow," said the Matron, coming out again and locking the door.
Jane had gone. She was as confident as the baby in her absence. It was that which impressed Anne. Neither of the two so lately one flesh, needed or cared for the other. Jane seemed to have shut herself of her own accord in that wooden case, so that she would be no longer teased or tortured, and the baby was quite happy that it should be so. Their disregard one of the other was strange to Anne.
"Elizabeth Richardson was inquiring if you were coming," said theMatron. "Will you go up and see her?"
Elizabeth Richardson was lying in the bed that had been Jane's. She looked less peevish and more tended. Anne glanced at the fireplace as she entered. The armchair had been moved back, and no one sat at the fire. She sighed and turned to Elizabeth.
"Yes, it's very comfortable," said Elizabeth. "I'm glad I came. It's nice to have the bed made every day. You'll have heard that Jane Evans is out of her troubles?"
Anne nodded.
"It's best, I think," said Elizabeth. "The world's none too kind, and she was a depending sort of girl. She got out of it easy enough. There'll be some disappointed though," she added with her old cynicism.
"Don't let's be hard in our judgments," said Anne, sadly.
The habit of working for another is so fixed in the lives of poor women, that the interruption of it becomes a kind of second death, almost as difficult to bear as the death of the affection which is itself almost a kind of habit. When Anne returned from market, and sat down, her house seemed to have become a little emptier, because the girl whose welfare she had carried with her for so many months was beyond her reach. She took down her Bible to read it, and find relief for her trouble. She was a woman who had had "experience"—that experience which comes to each as a kind of special revelation, a thing so surprising, that it appears impossible to think of its having happened before, or to withhold the telling; the cynicism, which declares this to be an overwhelming interest in one's internal self, being only partially right, it being rather the excited and surprised mental condition which is the deep well from which all art, all expression, breaks forth. She read slowly, trying to find meaning in each phrase, when suddenly a verse struck her in its entirety before her lips had finished reading.
"Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
She saw exactly what she would do. There was the child, motherless, and worse than fatherless. She would take him and bring him up unspotted from the world. It was clearly a leading for her. She had not been permitted to save the girl, but she might take and protect the boy. She remembered even the commonsense of Mrs Hankworth. "It's soonest forgotten about if it's a boy." She was not so much an old maid as a woman shut up from issue, and she had no fear of a child. And in the midst of her bewilderment about the girl, about death and the hereafter, she could see an earthly duty clearly, and pure religion for herself. She began to sing:
"Who points the clouds their course,Whom winds and storms obey,He shall direct thy wandering feet,He shall point out thy way."
She opened a drawer which held what was left of her father's clothes without any feeling of incongruity. There were four shirts of checked oxford shirting, two pairs of long stockings, a corduroy jacket, and his best suit of black serge bound with braid round the coat. There was a revolver, too, a clasp knife, a unused church-warden, an old wide-awake hat. To-morrow she would write to the Union, and offer to bring up the child when he was weaned.
It was a cool evening in early summer, full of the leisurely peace of the country. The women were out of doors after much perspiring work within. It was too early for the shadows, yet a sensible relief to the day's ardour, which one was disposed to linger and enjoy, was evident in the tranquil atmosphere, and on the relaxed faces of those who lingered about the doors of the cottages, or turned the bleaching clothes on the hedges. Mrs Hankworth, in a fashionable bonnet and dark green dress, which proclaimed a ceremonial visit, was driving beside her husband in a light yellow trap, in the unusual direction of Anne Hilton's cottage. Her husband, with his eyes on the road, suddenly pulled up the horse.
"Now, where did you two come from?" he ejaculated, jumping from the trap and examining the backs of two enormous sows, who were munching and rooting in foreign ground with great satisfaction. At the sight of their enemy, a man, they began that lumbering but nimble trot, by which their tribe elude and disregard anything disagreeable.
"You better get up again," said Mrs Hankworth. "We'll keep up to them and perhaps turn 'em in somewhere. Miss Hilton's the nearest."
"I don't recognise 'em," said the farmer, springing up with agility and driving the horse carefully after the sows. "Some one must have bought them yesterday. We can call at one or two places on the way back and inquire. There's William Crowther," he added, standing up in the trap—"William!" he shouted, "do you see them sows? Stop 'em at Anne Hilton's sty. I don't know whose they are."
"I'll give them a little exercise!" shouted William, setting off in pursuit. Anne Hilton looked out from her door to see the farmer standing up to bar the road backwards, and shouting directions to William, while he at the other side dodged one sow after the other, and Mrs Hankworth sat back laughing with enjoyment.
Anne ran to open the yard-gate, and, with management, the sows saw no other opening and ran in at a trot, scattering the squealing hens as they did so.
"Of all the knowing things!" said Mrs Hankworth.
"Well, Miss Hilton, we're bringing you two sows and ourselves to visit you!" said the farmer. "First a baby and then two sows! You'll keep a foundling home very soon."
He jumped out, and his wife came slowly over the wheel.
"Somebody'll be sending out to inquire for them soon," said Anne. "I'm very pleased to see you, Mrs Hankworth."
"We came to say we'd send you milk for the baby every day," said MrsHankworth, entering the kitchen. "You'll want yours for the butter."
"It's very kind of you," said Anne. "But he'll want a good deal."
"We've got seventy-five cows, you know," said Mrs Hankworth, with a contented laugh. "He'll not make much difference among 'em. Where is he? Bless him," she said, as she saw the baby staring at her from the wide wooden chair, in which he was tied.
"A fine baby," said the farmer with an ultimate tone.
"Heisa nice one!" said his wife. "Imusttake him," she said, picking up the baby and turning him face downwards over her arm while she seated herself. She spread open her knees and laid him, docile to her practised handling, across them. Anne watched her with the air of one taking a lesson.
"Did you have much trouble to get him?" asked Mrs Hankworth.
"No, very little," said Anne. "There were some papers to sign, and one or two other things, but I believe they're generally glad to board out children if they can."
"Well, he's a healthy child. Oh! I don't know anything that made me so full as to hear that poor girl had slipped away like that. I didn't get over it for some days. You remember the last time I saw you, I was intending to go and see her."
"Yes, we were all making plans," said Anne.
"Here's Mrs Crowther," said the farmer. "Come to see the baby, too, I expect. I'll just go and see how the sows is doing," he said, approaching the door.
"Well, Mr and Mrs Hankworth, I didn't expect to see you here," said Mrs Crowther, coming in. "I came to see how the baby was getting on. Eh, how theydoget hold of you, don't they, little things. Imusthave him a minute," she said, taking him from Mrs Hankworth's knee. "No, you're not the first baby I've had hold of," she added to the little creature, who twisted about with protesting noises. She smacked its soft thighs, and held its warm head against her cheek. "I'm right down silly over a baby!" she exclaimed, laying it back on Mrs Hankworth's knee.
"We can't have any more of our own," said the latter, "we have to make the best of other people's."
Anne took a tissue-paper parcel from the shelf, and opening it, showed a blue cashmere smock with a ribbon.
"I was so pleased," she said. "Mrs Phillipson's eldest girl that's to be married next month brought it in yesterday. It shows how you misjudge people. When I went to see them, they seemed so hard upon poor Jane. But she brought that pretty frock she'd made herself for the baby. She's a good-looking girl, and she'll make a good wife."
"You think on these things at such a time," said Mrs Hankworth. "All kinds o' little things you never thought of before come into your mind when you're going to be married. But it was nice of her. I shall think better of that girl after this."
"That sounds like Mary," said Anne, looking round the open door. "Yes it is. Come in, Mary. You'll find some friends here."
Mrs Hankworth laughed uproariously. "The baby's holding a reception," she said, her huge form shaking.
"It's Mrs Hankworth, I know," said Mary.
"And Mrs Crowther," interposed the latter herself; "we're making sillies of ourselves over the baby. Here, sit down and take him, Mary."
She set Mary in the chair which she had vacated, and laid the baby on her knees carefully placing the blind woman's hands over the little body.
"There's not much of him," said Mary. "What does he like? This?" And with her hands spread upon the child, she moved her knees backwards and forwards, clicking her heels on the floor.
"I could soon do it," she said, with a satisfied chuckle.
"I'm sure you could," said Anne.
"It was Peter Molesworth that told me you was here," said Mary, "so I thought I'd come too."
"Whateverdoyou think that Peter Molesworth came out with in the class the other day?" said Mrs Hankworth. "We was having as nice a meeting as you could wish, and then Peter gets up to give his experience. He says, 'I thank the Lord I've got peace in my home and a praying mother' (she's not much o' that, I thought to myself); and then he went on, 'You know, when I think of the troubles of others in serving Christ, I cannot bear. There's a poor woman I know,' he says, 'that's trying to serve Christ, and whenever she kneels down to say her prayers, her husband begins to tickle her feet.' Did you ever hear of anybody coming out with such a thing before? 'I think this door wants oiling, Mrs Hankworth,' he says to me as we was going out. 'Nay, Peter,' I says, 'it'stheethat wants oiling.' 'Why, Mrs Hankworth, what's the matter?' he says. 'Whatever made you come out with such a thing in the meeting,' I says. 'Why, what was wrong with it?' he says. 'Oh, well!' I says, 'if you don't know yourself,Ican't tell you,' I says. He's a bright one is Peter Molesworth."
"Are you ready, Mother?" shouted Mr Hankworth, putting his head in the door. "John Unsworth thinks the sows belongs to Mr Phillipson. He saw him bringing some home last night. We can take him on the way home."
"I'm coming," said Mrs Hankworth, rising slowly. "If there's anything you need, any advice or that, I'll be very pleased to give it you. Let me give him a kiss." "You're a beauty, that's what you are," she said, kissing the baby and giving it back to Mary.
"I must go too," said Mrs Crowther. "I'll send down some old flannel to-morrow, Anne. One of my girls'll come in and help you sometimes. It's well they should get used to a baby."
"She'll not be able to stop away herself," said Mrs Hankworth, shrewdly, and laughing together, both women went out, disputing amiably as to whether Mrs Crowther would take a seat in the trap and be driven as far as the cross roads.
The blind woman was feeling carefully the downy head of the baby.
"He's as soft as a kitten," she said. "I could spare several eggs a week out of the basket," she added, "if they'd be any use. I don't know much about babies. My brother was bigger than me when we was at home, and, of course, since then I've not had much to do with children."
Anne watched the two so helpless and confident. Mary rocked her knees steadily, and the child's head lay contentedly.
"I believe you've put him to sleep," said Anne. "Shall I put him in the cradle?"
"No, let me have him," said Mary, "I've never nursed a baby before."
Anne was left alone in the cottage with the baby, who slept in the clothes-basket she had turned into a cradle. The dog slept, too, having made friends with fortune. A late evening glow lit one side of the wall. When it faded, the dusk would absorb all the room and its inhabitants. Anne, sitting very still lest she should wake the baby, remembered one by one the agonies that had been lived through, whose sole result seemed to be this peaceful evening and the confidently breathing child. She remembered the shock of the disgrace to her, she, who had been a friend of the grandmother's, and how she had carried the burden about. She remembered the new house, and Jane, pretty, spoiled, and without misgiving, caring nothing for the hard judgments of which she herself imbibed the bitterness. Then Jane, with the child already striving to be free, leaving the new house at night, knowing without being told what door was open to her of all the doors in the country, and what place she would henceforth take. She saw the girl again, seated by the fire in the Infirmary ward, with that strange division between herself and all living, removed, as it were, to a distance which could not be bridged. Then Jane was no more to be found. There was the boy-child instead, who knew nothing except his desire to be kept alive; who met all reservations and pity by a determination to be fed. Throughout the whole evening, Anne had been struck by the fact that the other women scarcely thought of Jane any more than the baby did. It remained to them a very simple matter. There was a baby to feed and bring up. Being a boy, other things would soon be forgotten. It was too late, she knew, to do anything for Jane. The only thing that seemed possible to her in her simple reasoning, was to prevent such catastrophes for the future. It was not that pity was misplaced when shipwreck came, nor that charity ever failed. She understood, without being conscious of it, the ironic severity of Jesus, who would have no sudden pity and heart-searching on account of His poor. He had come into the world for righteousness and for judgment, and the judgment and righteousness both declared, not at the time of disaster or human appeal, nor with sudden loud outcries, but, "The poor always ye have with you, andwhensoever ye will, ye may do them good."
The baby stirred. Anne lit the candle, and set it on the stairs. She stepped over the dog, and took a warm flannel from the oven door. Tucking it in at the feet of the child, she lifted the clothes-basket and carried it upstairs. The dog raised his head and watched her. She returned, covered the fire, and set an earthenware pot of milk on the hob. The dog laid his nose between his paws again. Anne, taking the candle and leaving the room in darkness, closed the staircase door and went upstairs.