y and late,' I say, 'she's at wark; and as for her
floors--you might eat off of 'em.'" She screwed the half-dozen hard red
balls in their bit of paper, and stowed them lightly in the customer's
basket. "That the lot this week, Dinah?"

Dinah removed her basket from counter to arm. "What'd he got to say for
hisself, then?" she asked.

"'A woman like that can allust make time,' the old doctor he say. 'Tell
her to make time to help this here pore sufferin' woman.' I'm a-sayin'
it as he said it, Dinah. I ain't a-hintin' of it myself, bor."

"Ler'm tell me, hisself, an old interfarin' old fule, and he'll ha' the
rough side o' my tongue," the customer said; and nodded an unsmiling
good-afternoon, and went on her way.

Her way led her past the cottage of the woman of whom they had spoken.
Depper's cottage, indeed, was the first in the row of which Dinah's was
the last--a half-dozen two-roomed tenements, living-room below, bedroom
above, standing with their backs to the road, from which they were
divided by no garden, nor even so much as a narrow path. The lower
window of the two allotted to each house was about four or five feet
from the ground, and was of course the window of the living-room. Mrs
Brome, as she passed that of the first house in the row, suddenly
yielded to the impulse to stop and look within.

A small interior, with furniture much too big for it; a huge chest of
drawers, of oak with brass fittings; a broken-down couch as big as a
bed, covered with a dingy shawl, a man's greatcoat, a red flannel
petticoat; a table cumbered with the remains of wretched meals never
cleared away, and the poor cooking utensils of impoverished, shifty
housekeeping.

The woman of whom they had been speaking stood with her back to the
window. A stooping, drooping skeleton of a woman, who, with weak,
shaking hands, kneaded some dough in which a few currants were stuck,
before laying it on a black-looking baking tin.

"A fine time o' day to bake his fourses cake!" the woman outside
commented, reaching on tiptoe, the better to look in at the window.

The tin having its complement of cakes, the sick woman essayed to carry
it to the oven. But its weight was too much for her; it hung limply in
her weak grasp; before the oven was reached the cakes were on the
ragged carpet of the hearth.

"God in heaven!" ejaculated the woman looking in.

She watched while the poor woman within dropped on all-fours, feebly
trying to gather up the