ubstituting a kind of nightcap intended to
keep her hair free from dust. "Lauks, Mary, it's a good thing fate
doesn't always take us at our word. We don't know which side our
bread's buttered on, and that's the truth. Why, my dear, I wouldn't
exchange my old boy for all the Honourables in creation!"

They were in time to take leave of Jinny lying white as her pillows
behind the red rep hangings of the bed. The bony parts of her face had
sprung into prominence, her large soft eyes fallen in. John, stalking
solemnly and noiselessly in a long black coat, himself led the two
women to the bedroom, where he left them; they sat down one on each
side of the great fourposter. Jinny hardly glanced at her sister: it
was Mary she wanted, Mary's hand she fumbled for while she told her
trouble. "It's the children, Mary," she whispered. "I can't die happy
because of the children. John doesn't understand them." Jinny's whole
existence was bound up in the three little ones she had brought into
the world.

"Dearest Jinny, don't fret. I'll look after them for you, and take care
of them," promised Mary wiping away her tears.

"I thought so," said the dying woman, relieved, but without gratitude:
it seemed but natural to her, who was called upon to give up
everything, that those remaining should make sacrifices. Her fingers
plucked at the sheet. "John's been good to me," she went on, with
closed eyes. "But... if it 'adn't been for the children ... yes, the
children.... I think I'd 'a' done better--" her speech lapsed oddly,
after her years of patient practice--"to 'ave taken ... to 'a'
taken"--the name remained unspoken.

Tilly raised astonished eyebrows at Mary. "Wandering!" she telegraphed
in lip-language, forming the word very largely and distinctly; for
neither knew of Jinny having had any but her one glorious chance.

Tilly's big heart yearned over her sister's forlorn little ones; they
could be heard bleating like lambs for the mother to whom till now they
had never cried in vain. Her instant idea was to gather all three up in
her arms and carry them off to her own roomy, childless home, where she
would have given them a delightful, though not maybe a particularly
discriminating upbringing. But the funeral over, the blinds raised, the
two ladies and the elder babes clad in the stiff, expensive mourning
that befitted the widower's social position, John put his foot down:
and to Mary was extremely explicit: "Under no circumstances