matter now, in a manner o' speaking.
Last night I 'ad to go to Mile End for you, and here's Lizer out on a
sim'lar arrand. If people 'ave got to be 'ospital nurses to a sick baiby
they ought to be paid, mind ye. We're only pore, and it may be a sacred
dooty walkin' in percession, but it ain't fillin'."

Choking with anger, I said:

"Put out your pipe, please."

"Ma'am to _you_!"

"Put it out this moment, sir, or I'll see if I can't find somebody to
make you."

The bricklayer laughed, then pointed with the shank of his pipe to the
two photographs over the mantelpiece, and said:

"See them? Them's me, with my dooks up. If any friend o' yourn as is
interested in the baiby comes to lay a 'and on me I'll see if I've
forgot 'ow to use 'em."

I felt the colour shuddering out of my cheeks, and putting baby into the
cot I turned on the man and cried:

"You scoundrel! The doctor has told me what is the immediate cause of my
baby's illness and your wife has confessed to giving overdoses of a
drug at your direction. If you don't leave this house in one minute I'll
go straight to the police-station and charge you with poisoning my
child."

The bully in the coward was cowed in a moment.

"Don't get 'uffy, ma'am," he said. "I'm the peaceablest man in the East
End, and if I mentioned anything about a friend o' yourn it slipped out
in the 'eat of the moment--see?"

"Out you go! Go! Go!" I cried, and, incredible as it may seem, the man
went flying before my face as if I had been a fury.

It would be a long tale to tell of what happened the day following, the
next and the next and the next--how baby became less drowsy, but more
restless; how being unable to retain her food she grew thinner and
thinner; how I wished to send for the doctor, but dared not do so from
fear of his fee; how the little money I had left was barely sufficient
to buy the food and stimulants which were necessary to baby's cure: how
I sat for long hours with my little lamb on my lap straining my dry eyes
into her face; and how I cried to God for the life of my child, which
was everything I had or wanted.

All this time I was still lodging at the Jew's, returning to it late
every night, and leaving it early in the morning, but nothing happened
there that seemed to me of the smallest consequence. One day Miriam,
looking at me with her big black eyes, said:

"You must take more rest, dear, or you will make yourself ill."

"No, no, I am not ill," I ans