h much loving labour: the shining grate: the
foolish china dogs and the little china house between them on the
mantelpiece. The fire was burning brightly, and the kettle was singing
on the hob.

Mary's work was finished. She sat upright in her straight-backed chair
before the table, her eyes half closed. It seemed so odd to see those
little work-worn hands idle upon her lap.

Joan's present lay on the table near to her, as if she had just folded it
and placed it there: the little cap and the fine robe of lawn: as if for
a king's child.

Joan had never thought that Death could be so beautiful. It was as if
some friend had looked in at the door, and, seeing her so tired, had
taken the work gently from her hands, and had folded them upon her lap.
And she had yielded with a smile.

Joan heard a faint rustle and looked up. A woman had entered. It was
the girl she had met there on a Christmas Day, a Miss Ensor. Joan had
met her once or twice since then. She was still in the chorus. Neither
of them spoke for a few minutes.

"I have been expecting every morning to find her gone," said the girl. "I
think she only waited to finish this." She gently unfolded the fine lawn
robe, and they saw the delicate insertion and the wonderful, embroidery.

"I asked her once," said the girl, "why she wasted so much work on them.
They were mostly only for poor people. 'One never knows, dearie,' she
answered, with that childish smile of hers. 'It may be for a little
Christ.'"

They would not let less loving hands come near her.

* * * * *

Her father had completed his business, and both were glad to leave
London. She had a sense of something sinister, foreboding, casting its
shadow on the sordid, unclean streets, the neglected buildings falling
into disrepair. A lurking savagery, a half-veiled enmity seemed to be
stealing among the people. The town's mad lust for pleasure: its fierce,
unjoyous laughter: its desire ever to be in crowds as if afraid of
itself: its orgies of eating and drinking: its animal-like indifference
to the misery and death that lay but a little way beyond its own horizon!
She dared not remember history. Perhaps it would pass.

The long, slow journey tried her father's strength, and assuming an
authority to which he yielded obedience tempered by grumbling, Joan sent
him to bed, and would not let him come down till Christmas Day. The big,
square house was on the outskirts of the town where it was