re always dirty, cried
themselves to sleep in hunger and pain. When Emma returned, still only
fit for a convalescent home, she had to walk about day after day in
search of work, conciliating the employers whom Mrs. Clay had neglected
or disgusted, undertaking jobs to which her strength was inadequate,
and, not least, striving her hardest to restore order in the wretched
home. It was agreed that Kate should use the machine at home, whilst
Emma got regular employment in a workroom.

Emma never heard of that letter which her sister wrote to Mutimer's
wife. Kate had no expectation that help would come of it; she hoped that
it had done Mutimer harm, and the hope had to satisfy her. She durst not
let Emma suspect that she had done such a thing.

Emma heard, however, of the loan from Daniel Dabbs, and afterwards
thanked him for his kindness, but she resolutely set her face against
the repetition of such favours, though Daniel would have willingly
helped when she came out of the hospital. Kate, of course, was for
accepting anything that was offered; she lost her temper, and accused
Emma of wishing to starve the children. But she was still greatly under
her sister's influence, and when Emma declared that there must be
a parting between them if she discovered that anything was secretly
accepted from Mr. Dabbs, Kate sullenly yielded the point.

Daniel was aware of all this, and it made an impression upon him.

To-night Emma was as usual left alone with the children. After tea, when
Kate left the house, she sat down to the machine and worked for a couple
of hours; for her there was small difference between Sunday and week
day. Whilst working she told the children stories; it was a way of
beguiling them from their desire to go and play in the street. They were
strange stories, half recollected from a childhood which, had promised
better things than a maidenhood of garret misery, half Emma's own
invention. They had a grace, a spontaneity, occasionally an imaginative
brightness, which would have made them, if they had been taken down from
the lips, models of tale-telling for children. Emma had two classes
of story: the one concerned itself with rich children, the other with
poor; the one highly fanciful, the other full of a touching actuality,
the very essence of a life such as that led by the listeners themselves.
Unlike the novel which commends itself to the world's grown children,
these narratives had by no means necessarily a h