e.
Before she went there at eight and after her return at six, she had
helped Mrs. Creddle during the crises constantly recurring in a family
of four little girls under twelve years old. Indeed, as her aunt said,
she formed another example of good coming out of evil--for evil it
seemed, when the Creddles had been obliged to take in Caroline among
their increasing brood after the death of her father and mother.

Not that there had ever been any question about it. "You couldn't let
the poor little lass go to the workhouse," said Mrs. Creddle when
anyone spoke to her on the subject. "Bless you, we've never missed the
bit she used to eat before she began to make aught, and she's earned
her keep with us over and over again since then."

Mr. Creddle also expressed the same meaning, though in different terms,
when pals ventured with a smile to hint that he had lasses enough under
his roof without getting in any from outside. "That's my business," he
would say. "I don't see as anybody has a right to pass a remark. I'd
rather have four lasses than a red nose, anyway."

If the person addressed happened to possess the outward and visible
signs of alcoholic excess, so much the worse for him--Mr. Creddle was
touchy on the subject of his family and did not wish to please. His
own nose was slightly rubicund, but it was solely owing to the east
winds which constantly blew across it as he worked for the Council on
the long roads near the sea; for he was a sober man, and when he did
have a glass of beer on a Saturday night, he brought it home in a jug
to share with his wife.

For years, indeed, when the babies were arriving, that was their only
little festival from week's end to week's end. They would stand the
jug on the table, and Mrs. Creddle would bring out some freshly baked
"pie"; with thick crust above and below, and apples or currants and
sugar, or gooseberries inside; and with the house all clean for Sunday,
they would take their hour of ease late on Saturday night.

So Caroline had been brought up in an atmosphere of kindness, though
Mr. Creddle had once threatened to strap her if she ran about with the
lads again after dark. He had caught her racing with streaming hair
round some half-built houses in Emerald Avenue, among a party of boys
who ought to have been in bed, and his brief comments as he escorted
her home were Elizabethan and to the point. Oddly enough, they burnt
deeper into her mind than the whole of