r a long while the drawer had
not had the periodical setting straight which woman grants it, and its
contents were aged, dingy and undesirable--camisole-ribbons like
boot-strings, lace collars long out of fashion, a rose or two crumpled
into flat and withered blobs, shapeless and faded. She touched things
sorrowfully.

"My pretty things!" she thought with regret.

At what precise moment the idea came to her she did not know, but it
intruded by degrees. She began to think idly of money, to turn over in
her mind the exact allowance with which Osborn had left her, and she
knew herself rich. Till yesterday her domestic budget, for herself,
the children and Osborn, had been at the rate of about one hundred and
forty pounds a year. He had to have the rest. Now she had two hundred
and no man to keep. It would have taken a woman to understand why she
suddenly sprang up, why her sallowed face took on a hasty colour, and
with what an incredulously beating heart she hastened down the grey
stone stairs to the hall-porter's box.

"Porter," she said, controlling her voice with difficulty, "I want a
charwoman at once; and--and for two or three hours every morning. You
could find one for me?"

Like every other block of flats, the place was infested with ladies of
the charing profession, and he promised her one within half an hour.
Returning to her children, she sat down at ease in the dining-room to
await the woman's arrival.

When she came, it was joy to show her round; to say: "I want the
bedroom and hall and kitchen done; these things washed up; and these
vegetables prepared. And these things of the children's washed out,
please. I shall be back before you've finished."

Then she put on the children's outdoor things, established the baby
and the three-year-old at either end of the perambulator and, with
George walking manfully by her side, set out upon an errand.

She was going to tell her mother of what had befallen; she hardly knew
why, but the wisdom of matronly counsel and opinion, irritating as it
was, had impressed her forcibly during the past years. So she and
George trundled the shabby grey perambulator, Rokeby's gift, across
the Heath, and along the intervening streets to Grannie Amber's.

They left the perambulator in the courtyard and made a slow journey up
the stairs to her nice flat on the first floor. That flat, which had
seemed so small and old-fashioned to the girl Marie, appeared as a
haven of refuge and c