ow, and tidy myself a bit and go and
cheer the poor creature up for I know very well how one wants cheering at
such times. Was it a hard time she had with it? And who is it like the
little angel that came straight from heaven this blessed day? The dear
woman! I must be off, so I'll say good-day to you, Mrs. Phillips, and may
the sun shine on you and your sweetheart, Nellie, even if he does take
you away from us all, and may you have a houseful of babies with faces as
sweet as your own and never miss a neighbour to cheer you a bit when the
trouble's on you. The Lord be with us all!"

Nellie laughed as the rough-voiced, kind-hearted woman took herself off,
to cross the broken dividing wall to the row of houses that backed
closely on the open kitchen door. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

"It's always the way," she remarked, as she turned away to the other door
that led along a little, narrow passage to the street. "What's going to
become of the innocent little baby? Nobody thinks of that."

Mrs. Phillips did not answer. She was tidying up in a wearied way.
Besides, she was used to Nellie, and had a dim perception that what that
young woman said was right, only one had to work, especially on Saturdays
when the smallest children could be safely turned into the street to play
with the elder ones, the baby nursed by pressed nurses, who by dint of
scolding and coaxing and smacking and promising were persuaded to keep it
out of the house, even though they did not keep it altogether quiet. Mrs.
Phillips "tidied up" in a wearied way, without energy, working stolidly
all the time as if she were on a tread-mill. She had a weary look, the
expression of one who is tired always, who gets up tired and goes to bed
tired, and who never by any accident gets a good rest, who even when dead
is not permitted to lie quietly like other people but gets buried the
same day in a cheap coffin that hardly keeps the earth up and is doomed
to he soon dug up to make room for some other tired body in that
economical way instituted by the noble philanthropists who unite a keen
appreciation of the sacredness of burial with a still keener appreciation
of the value of grave-lots. She might have been a pretty girl once or she
might not. Nobody would ever have thought of physical attractiveness as
having anything to do with her. Mrs. Macanany was distinctly ugly. Mrs.
Phillips was neither ugly nor pretty nor anything else. She was a poor
thin draggled woma