in overcoming the dread
excited by Clem's proximity. Even now she never looked straight into
Miss Peckover's face, as she did when speaking with others; there was
reserve in her manner, reserve unmistakable, though clothed with her
pleasant smile and amiable voice.

'I've got something to tell you, Jane,' Clem began, in a tone inaudible
to those who were sitting near. 'Something as'll surprise you.'

'What is it, I wonder?'

'You must swear you won't tell nobody.'

Jane nodded. Then the other brought her head a little nearer, and
whispered:

'I'm goin' to be married!'

'Are you really?'

'In a week. Who do you think it is? Somebody as you know of, but if you
guessed till next Christmas you'd never come right.'

Nor had Clem any intention of revealing the name, but she laughed
consumedly, as if her reticence covered the most amusing situation
conceivable.

'It'll be the biggest surprise you ever had in your life. You've swore
you won't speak about it. I don't think I shall come to work after this
week--but you'll have to come an' see us. You'll promise to, won't you?'

Still convulsed with mirth, Clem went off to another part of the room.
From Jane's countenance the look of amusement which she had perforce
summoned soon passed; it was succeeded by a shadow almost of pain, and
not till she had been at work again for nearly an hour was the former
placidity restored to her.

When final release came, Jane was among the first to hasten down the
wooden staircase and get clear of the timber yard. By the direct way,
it took her twenty minutes to walk from Whitehead's to her home in
Hanover Street, but this evening she had an object in turning aside.
The visit she wished to pay took her into a disagreeable quarter, a
street of squalid houses, swarming with yet more squalid children. On
all the doorsteps Bat little girls, themselves only just out of
infancy, nursing or neglecting bald, red-eyed, doughy-limbed abortions
in every stage of babyhood, hapless spawn of diseased humanity, born to
embitter and brutalise yet further the lot of those who unwillingly
gave them life. With wide, pitiful eyes Jane looked at each group she
passed. Three years ago she would have seen nothing but the ordinary
and the inevitable in such spectacles, but since then her moral and
intellectual being had grown on rare nourishment; there was indignation
as well as heartache in the feeling with which she had learnt to regard
the world of he