her into
service, and the clergyman where she was had said there were other
places he could get her, but only, all of them, if she would give up the
baby and put it out to nurse somewhere: and she said, and underlined it
about fourteen times, Sabre said, and cried over it so you could hardly
read it, she said: 'And, oh, Mrs. Sabre, I can't, I can't, I simply can
not give up my little baby.... He's mine,' she said. 'He looks at me,
and knows me, and stretches out his tiny little hands to me, and I can't
give him up. I can't let my little baby go. Whatever I've done, I'm his
mother and he's my little baby and I can't let him go.'

"Sabre said it was awful. I can believe it was. I'd seen the girl, and
I'd seen her stooping over her baby (like I told you) and I can well
believe awful was the word for it. Poor soul.

"And then she said--I can remember this bit--then she said, 'And so, in
my terrible distress, dear Mrs. Sabre, I am throwing myself on your
mercy, and begging you, imploring you, for the love of God to take in me
and my little baby and let me work for you and do anything for you and
bless you and ask God's blessing for ever upon you and teach my little
baby to pray for you as--' something or other, I forget. And then she
said a lot of hysterical things about working her fingers to the bone
for Mrs. Sabre, and knowing she was a wicked girl and not fit to be
spoken to by any one, and was willing, to sleep in a shed in the garden
and never to open her mouth, and all that sort of thing; and all the way
through 'my little baby,' 'my little baby.' Sabre said it was awful.
Also she said,--I'm telling you just what Sabre told me, and he told me
this bit deliberately, as you might say--also she said that she didn't
want to pretend she was more sinned against than sinning, but that if
Mrs. Sabre knew the truth she might judge her less harshly and be more
willing to help her. Yes, Sabre told me that....

"All right. Well, there was the appeal, 'there was this piteous appeal',
as Sabre said, and there was Sabre profoundly touched by it, and there
was his wife bridling over it--one up against her husband who'd always
stuck up for the girl, d'you see, and about two million up in
justification of her own opinion of her. There they were; and then Sabre
said, turning the letter over in his hands, 'Well, what are you going to
do about it?'

"You can imagine his wife's tone. '_Do_ about it! Do about it! What on
earth do you t