den woman peevishly. "You're
getting too fat."

"Fat people's better-tempered than thin ones," retorted the other
carelessly. "Good evening, Miss Hilton! Has she been telling you all
she's got to put up with more than other people?"

"Well now," returned Anne with decisive heartiness, "I don't think we've
been speaking about herself at all, except to express gratitude for a
very little service that I did her. We've spent a pleasant hour
together."

"I'm glad to hear it," said the woman, going to the fire and rattling
the irons noisily between the bars.

"You noisy thing. Can't you make a less din!" said the bed-ridden woman,
biting her lip.

"Other people's got to live in the house besides you," said the woman.
"If you want so much attention, you know where you can get it."

The bed-ridden woman shut her eyes and lay still at this threat of the
workhouse, that confession of failure, in a world where ability to work
becomes a kind of morality, and lack of physical strength to procure the
means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden
against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one
most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come
to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or
more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be
acknowledged publicly a failure.

When this last pride is taken away, there sometimes appears a kind of
patience which is not really that of despair, but which is nearer to
that attained by great saints after long effort and discipline--the
mental equilibrium which is the result of desire quenched, of
expectation for further good for oneself at an end. What the saints
attain by a painful and mortifying life, the poor receive as a gift from
the tender mercies of the world, receiving also the passionate pity of
Jesus, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."

"If she could only work as she used, and be 'beholden' to nobody." She
sighed and lay still, her mind an abyss of bitterness.

The stout newcomer, step-daughter to the unfortunate woman, turned to
Anne, jerking her head backwards to indicate the other woman in bed with
an expression of satisfaction which said quite plainly, "That's the way
to settle _her_." Then she ignored her totally, except that she moved as
noisily, and spoke as loudly as she could.

She was a rather pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an