with her. Sensible when she grasps a thing, she is often
a bit mazed. She has the figure of an old woman--bent, screwed--and the
toughness of a young one. Her words, spoken pell-mell in a high
strained voice which oscillates between laughter and tears, seem to be
tumbling down a hill one after another. Spite of all her household
difficulties, she retains the usual table of ornaments just inside the
front door. Last summer she reclaimed from the roadway a tiny
triangular garden, about five inches long in the sides, by wedging a
piece of slate between the doorstep and the wall. There she kept three
stunted little wall-flowers--no room for more--which she attended to
every morning after breakfast. Cats destroyed them in the end. She
laughed, as it were gleefully. Her laugh is her own; derisive,
open-mouthed, shapeless, hardly sane--but she has a smile--a smile at
nothing in particular, at her own thoughts--which is singularly sweet
and pathetic. I cannot but think that the spirit which enables her to
live on without despair, to love her little garden and to smile so
sweetly, is better worth than much material comfort. Hers, after all,
is a life that has its fragrance.

12

[Sidenote: _TONY AS NURSEMAID_]

Mrs Widger went off after tea to look at Rosie's grave. She likes to go
alone, without the children, and she also likes to stop and have a chat
with someone she knows up on land. In consequence, Tony, taking his
Sunday evening promenade, found the children on the Front just in that
state when they want, and do not wish, to go to bed. They followed him
in.

"Wer's thic Mam 'Idger?"

"Don' know!"

"Her's gone to cementry."

"Didn' ought to leave 'ee like thees yer."

"Her's gone to see Rosie."

Tony felt himself rather helpless. "Now then," he cried with a vain
nourish, "off to bed wi' 'ee!"

"No!--No!--Shan't!--Us an't had no supper."

"Wer is yer supper? What be going to hae?"

"Don' know.--Mam! Mam 'Idger!"

One started crying, then the other.

"Casn' thee put 'em to bed thyself?" I asked.

"I don' know! Better wait.... Her's biding away a long time. I'll hae
to talk to she."

Tony sat down in the courting chair. The two boys climbed one on each
of his knees. They wriggled themselves comfortable, and fell asleep. He
woke them. "Won' 'ee go to bed now? I wants to go out."

"No! No!" they cried peevishly. "Wer's thiccy Mam?"

Their white heads, turned downwards in sleep on either side of Tony's