was almost more than I could bear
to think about.

I _had_ to think of it. But I could only do so by telling myself that,
when I put baby out to nurse, I might arrange to see her every morning
and evening and as often as my employment permitted.

This idea partly reconciled me to my sacrifice, and I was in the act of
drawing up a newspaper advertisement in these terms when my landlady
came to say that the nurse knew of somebody who would suit me exactly.

Nurse called the same evening and told me a long story about her friend.

She was a Mrs. Oliver, and she lived at Ilford, which was at the other
end of London and quite on the edge of the country. The poor woman, who
was not too happily married, had lost a child of her own lately, and was
now very lonely, being devoted to children.

This pleased me extremely, especially (God forgive me!), the fact that
Mrs. Oliver was a bereaved mother and lived on the edge of the country.

Already in my mind's eye I saw her sitting on sunny days under a tree
(perhaps in an orchard) with Isabel in her arms, rocking her gently and
singing to her softly, and almost forgetting that she was not her own
baby whom she had lost . . . though that was a two-edged sword which cut
me both ways, being a sort of wild joy with tears lurking behind it.

So I took a note of Mrs. Oliver's address (10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's
Green, Ilford) and wrote to her the same night, asking her terms and
stating my own conditions.

A reply came the following day. It was a badly-written and misspelt
letter, which showed me that Mrs. Oliver must be a working woman
(perhaps the wife of a gardener or farm-labourer, I thought), though
that did not trouble me in the least, knowing by this time how poor
people loved their children.

_"The terms is fore shillins a weke," she wrote, "but i am that
lonelie sins my own littel one lef me i wood tike your swete
darling for nothin if I cud afford it and you can cum to see her as
offen as you pleas_."

In my ignorance and simplicity this captured me completely, so I replied
at once saying I would take baby to Ilford the next day.

I did all this in a rush, but when it came to the last moment I could
scarcely part with my letter, and I remember that I passed three
pillar-boxes in the front street before I could bring myself to post it.

I suppose my eyes must have been red when I returned home, for my Welsh
landlady (whom I had taken into my conf