ead.

After a while there was rustle of dresses coming down the bare stairs,
followed by the opening and closing of the front door, and then the
Matron came into the parlour.

She was a very tall, flat-bosomed woman in a plain black dress, and she
seemed to take in our situation instantly. Without waiting for Mildred's
explanation she began to ask my name, my age, and where I came from.

Mildred fenced these questions as well as she could, and then, with even
more nervousness than ever, made the same request as before.

The Matron seemed aghast.

"Most certainly not," she said. "My committee would never dream of such
a thing. In the interests of the unfortunate girls who have fallen from
the path of virtue, as well as their still more unfortunate offspring,
we always make the most searching inquiries. In fact, we keep a record
of every detail of every case. Listen to this," she added, and opening a
large leather-bound hook like a ledger, she began to read one of its
entries:

_"H.J., aged eighteen years, born of very respectable parents, was led
astray_ [that was not the word] _in a lonely road very late at night by
a sailor who was never afterwards heard of. . . ."_

But I could bear no more, and rising from my seat I fled from the room
and the house into the noisy street outside.

All day long my whole soul had been in revolt. It seemed to me that,
while God in His gracious mercy was giving me my child to comfort and
console me, to uplift and purify me, and make me a better woman than I
had been before, man, with his false and cruel morality, with his
machine-made philanthropy, was trying to use it as a whip to punish not
only me but Martin.

But that it should never do! Never as long as I lived! I would die in
the streets first!

Perhaps I was wrong, and did not understand myself, and certainly
Mildred did not understand me. When she rejoined me in the street we
turned our faces homeward and were half way back to the boarding-house
before we spoke again.

Then she said:

"I am afraid the other institutions will be the same. They'll all want
references."

I answered that they should never get them.

"But your money will be done soon, my child, and then what is to become
of you?"

"No matter!" I said, for I had already determined to face the world
myself without help from anybody.

There was a silence again until we reached the door of our
boarding-house, and then Mildred said:

"Mary, your fath