me while he took
the nose-bag off his horse--a bony old thing with its head hanging down.

I stepped up to him and asked my way, and he pointed it out to me--to
the right, over the bridge and through Stratford Market.

I asked how far it was to Ilford.

"Better nor two mile _I_ call it," he answered.

After that, being so tired in brain as well as body, I asked a foolish
question--how long it would take me to get there.

The old driver looked at me again, and said:

"'Bout a 'our and a 'alf I should say by the looks of you--and you
carryin' the biby."

I dare say my face dropped sadly as I turned away, feeling very tired,
yet determined to struggle through. But hardly had I walked twenty paces
when I heard the cab coming up behind and the old driver crying:

"'Old on, missie."

I stopped, and to my surprise he drew up by my side, got down from his
box, opened the door of his cab and said:

"Ger in."

I told him I could not afford to ride.

"Ger in," he said again more loudly, and as if angry with himself for
having to say it.

Again I made some demur, and then the old man said, speaking fiercely
through his grizzly beard:

"Look 'ere, missie. I 'ave a gel o' my own lost somewheres, and I
wouldn't be ans'rable to my ole woman if I let you walk with a face like
that."

I don't know what I said to him. I only know that my tears gushed out
and that at the next moment I was sitting in the cab.

What happened then I do not remember, except that the dull rumble of the
wheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and that I saw through the
mist before my eyes a sluggish river, a muddy canal, and patches of
marshy fields.

I think my weariness and perhaps my emotion, added to the heavy
monotonous trotting of the old horse, must have put me to sleep, for
after a while I was conscious of a great deal of noise, and of the old
driver twisting about and shouting in a cheerful voice through the open
window at the back of his seat:

"Stratford Market."

After a while we came to a broad road, full of good houses, and then the
old driver cried "Ilford," and asked what part of it I wished to go to.

I reached forward and told him, "10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's Green," and
then sat back with a lighter heart.

But after another little while I saw a great many funeral cars passing
us, with the hearses empty, as if returning from a cemetery. This made
me think of the woman and her story, and I found myself unconsc