t know me
and was raving. Word was taken to the hospital and a doctor came. He
said it was a bad case, and she must be taken to the hospital at once,
and he would send the van. It came, the two men with it lifted her from
her bed and placed her on a stretcher. A crowd had gathered on the
street to see her brought out and placed in the van. I thought I was to
go with her, and tried to get on the seat. The helper pushed me away,
but the driver bent over and gave me a penny. The horse started and I
never saw my mother again. I ran after the van, but it got to the
hospital long before I was in sight of it. I went to the door and said I
wanted my mother; the porter roughly told me to go away. I waited in
front of the building until it got dark, and I wondered behind which of
the rows of lighted windows mother lay. When cold to the bone I went
back to our room. A neighbor heard me cry and would have me come to her
kitchen-fire and she gave me some gruel. Sitting I fell asleep.

I was told I must not go into our room, it was dangerous, so I went to
the hospital and waited and watched the people go in and out. One
gentleman with a kind face came out and I made bold to speak to him.
When I said mother had fever he told me nobody could see her, and that
she would be taken good care of. I thought my heart would burst. I could
not bear to stay on the Gallowgate, and so weary days passed in my
keeping watch on the hospital. On Sunday coming, the neighbor who was so
kind to me, said she would go with me, for they allowed visitors to see
patients on Sunday afternoon. We started, I trotting cheery in the
thought I was about to see my mother. The clerk at the counter asked the
name and disease. He said no visitors were admitted to the fever-ward.
Could he find out how she was? He spoke into a tin tube and coming back
opened a big book. 'She died yesterday,' he said quite unconcerned. I
could not help it, I gave a cry and fainted. As we trudged home in the
rain, the woman told me they had buried her.

I had now no home. The landlord fumigated our room with sulphur, took
the little furniture for the rent, and got another tenant. Everybody was
kind but I knew they had not enough for themselves, and the resolve took
shape, that I would go to the parish where my mother was born. Often,
when we took a walk on the Green, Sunday evenings, she would point to
the hills beyond which her father's home once was, and I came to think
of that country-