XVIII
HER HAIR hung about her, her hands and wrists were shrunken, her flesh was soft and flabby, and she had dark shadows in her face. Nursing her child seemed to draw all strength from her, and her nervous depression increased; she was too weary and ill to think of the future, and for a whole week her physical condition held her, to the exclusion of every other thought. Mrs. Jones was very kind, and only charged her ten shillings a week for her board and lodging, but this was a great deal when only two pounds five shillings remained between her and the workhouse, and this fact was brought home to her when Mrs. Jones came to her for the first week’s money. Ten shillings gone; only one pound fifteen shillings left, and still she was so weak that she could hardly get up and down stairs. But if she were twice as weak, if she had to crawl along the street on her hands and knees, she must go to the hospital and implore the matron to get her a situation as wet-nurse. It was raining heavily, and Mrs. Jones said it was madness for her to go out in such weather, but go she must; and though it was distant only a few hundred yards, she often thought she would like to lie down and die. And at the hospital only disappointment. Why hadn’t she called yesterday? Yesterday two ladies of title had come and taken two girls away. Such a chance might not occur for some time. “For some time,” thought Esther; “very soon I shall have to apply for admission at the workhouse.” She reminded the matron of her promise, and returned home more dead than alive. Mrs. Jones helped her to change her clothes, and bade her be of good heart. Esther looked at her hopelessly, and sitting down on the edge of her bed she put the baby to her breast.
 Another week passed. She had been to the hospital every day, but no one had been to inquire for a wet-nurse. Her money was reduced to a few shillings, and she tried to reconcile herself to the idea that she might do worse than to accept the harsh shelter of the workhouse. Her nature revolted against it; but she must do what was best for the child. She often asked herself how it would all end, and the more she thought, the more terrible did the future seem. Her miserable meditations were interrupted by a footstep on the stairs. It was Mrs. Jones, coming to tell her that a lady who wanted a wet-nurse had come from the hospital; and a lady entered dressed in a beautiful brown silk, and looked around the humble room, clearly shocked at its poverty. Esther, who was sitting on the bed, rose to meet the fine lady, a thin woman, with narrow temples, aquiline features, bright eyes, and a disagreeable voice.
 “You are the young person who wants a situation as wet-nurse?”
 “Yes, ma’am.”
 “Are you married?”
 “No, ma’am.”
 “Is that your first child?”
 “Yes, ma’am.”
 “Ah, that’s a pity. But it doesn’t matter much, so long as you and your baby are healthy. Will you show it to me?”
 “He is asleep now, ma’am,” Esther said, raising the bed-clothes; “there never was a healthier child.”
 “Yes, he seems healthy enough. You have a good supply of milk?”
 “Yes, ma’am.”
 “Fifteen shillings, and all found. Does that suit you?”
 “I had expected a pound a week.”
 “It is only your first baby. Fifteen shillings is quite enough. Of course I only engage you subject to the doctor’s approval. I’ll ask him to call.”
“Very well, ma’am; I shall be glad of the place.”
 “Then it is settled. You can come at once?”
 “I must arrange to put my baby out to nurse, ma’am.”
 The lady’s face clouded. But following up another train of thought, she said —
 “Of course you must arrange about your baby, and I hope you’ll make proper arrangements. Tell the woman in whose charge you leave it that I shall want to see it every three weeks. It will be better so,” she added under her breath, “for two have died already.”
 “This is my card,” said the lady — “Mrs. Rivers, Curzon Street, Mayfair — and I shall expect you to-morrow afternoon — that is to say, if the doctor approves of you. Here is one-and-sixpence for your cab fare.”
 “Thank you, ma’am.”
 “I shall expect you not later than four o’clock. I hope you won’t disappoint me; remember my child is waiting.”
 When Mrs. Rivers left, Esther consulted with Mrs. Jones. The difficulty was now where she should put the child out at nurse. It was now just after two o’clock. The baby was fast asleep, and would want nothing for three or four hours. It would be well for Esther to put on her hat and jacket and go off at once. Mrs. Jones gave her the address of a respectable woman who used to take charge of children. But this woman was nursing twins, and could not possibly undertake the charge of another baby. And Esther visited many streets, always failing for one reason or another. At last she found herself in Wandsworth, in a battered tumble-down little street, no thoroughfare, only four houses and a coal-shed. Broken wooden palings stood in front of the small area into which descent was made by means of a few wooden steps. The wall opposite seemed to be the back of some stables, and in the area of No. 3 three little mites were playing. The baby was tied in a chair, and a short fat woman came out of the kitchen at Esther’s call, her dirty apron sloping over her high stomach, and her pale brown hair twisted into a knot at the top of her head.
 “Well, what is it?”
 “I came about putting a child out to nurse. You are Mrs. Spires, ain’t yer?”
 “Yes, that’s my name. May I ask who sent you?”
 Esther told her, and then Mrs. Spires asked her to step down into the kitchen.
 “Them ’ere children you saw in the area I looks after while their mothers are out washing or charing. They takes them ’ome in the evening. I only charges them four-pence a-day, and it is a loss at that, for they does take a lot of minding. What age is yours?”
 “Mine is only a month old. I’ve a chance to go out as wet-nurse if I can find a place to put him out at nurse. Will you look after my baby?”
 “How much do you think of paying for him?”
 “Five shillings a week.”
 “And you a-going out as wet-nurse at a pound a week; you can afford more than that.”
 “I’m only getting fifteen shillings a week.”
 “Well, you can afford to pay six. I tell you the responsibility I of looking after a hinfant is that awful nowadays that I don’t care to undertake it for less.”
 Esther hesitated; she did not like this woman.
 “I suppose,” said the woman, altering her tone to one of mild interrogation, “you would like your baby to have the best of everything, and not the drainings of any bottle that’s handy?”
 “I should like my child to be well looked after, and I must see the child every three weeks.”
 “Do you expect me to bring up the child to wherever the lady lives, and pay my ‘bus fare, all out of five shillings a week? It can’t be done!” Esther did not answer. “You ain’t married, of course?” Mrs. Spires said suddenly.
 “No, I ain’t; what about that?”
 “Oh, nothing; there is so many of you, that’s all. You can’t lay yer ’and on the father and get a bit out of ’im?”
 The conversation paused. Esther felt strangely undecided. She looked round suspiciously, and noticing the look the woman said —
 “Your baby will be well looked after ’ere; a nice warm kitchen, and I’ve no other babies for the moment; them children don’t give no trouble, they plays in the area. You had better let me have the child; you won’t do better than ’ere.”
 Esther promised to think it over and let her know to-morrow. It took her many omnibuses to get home, and it was quite dark when she pushed the door to. The first thing that caught her ear was her child crying. “What is the matter?” she cried, hurrying down the passage.
 “Oh, is that you? You have been away a time. The poor child is that hungry he has been crying this hour or more. If I’d ’ad a bottle I’d ’ave given him a little milk.”
 “Hungry, is he? Then he shall have plenty soon. It is nearly the last time I shall nurse the poor darling.” Then she told Mrs. Jones about Mrs. Spires, and both women tried to arrive at a decision.
“Since you have to put the child out to nurse, you might as well put him there as elsewhere; the woman will look after him as well as she can — she’ll do that, if it is for the sake of the six shillings a week.”
 “Yes, yes, I know; but I’ve always heard that children die that are put out to nurse. If mine died I never should forgive myself.”
 She could not sleep; she lay with her arms about her baby, distracted at the thought of parting from him. What had she done that her baby should be separated from her? What had the poor little darling done? He at least was innocent; why should he be deprived of his mother? At midnight she got up and lighted a candle, looked at him, took him in her arms, squeezed him to her bosom till he cried, and the thought came that it would be sweeter to kill him with her own hands than to be parted from him.
 The thought of murder went with the night, and she enjoyed the journey to Wandsworth. Her baby laughed and cooed, and was much admired in the omnibus, and the little street where Mrs. Spires lived seemed different. A cart of hay was being unloaded, and this gave the place a pleasant rural air. Mrs. Spires, too, was cleaner, tidier; Esther no longer disliked her; she had a nice little cot ready for the baby, and he seemed so comfortable in it that Esther did not feel the pangs at parting which she had expected to feel. She would see him in a few weeks, and in those weeks she would be richer. It seemed quite wonderful to earn so much money in so short a time. She had had a great deal of bad luck, but her luck seemed to have turned at last. So engrossed was she in the consideration of her good fortune that she nearly forgot to get out of her ‘bus at Charing Cross, and had it not been for the attention of the conductor might have gone on, she did not know where — perhaps to Clerkenwell, or may be to Islington. When the second ‘bus turned into Oxford Street she got out, not wishing to spend more money than was necessary. Mrs. Jones approved of all she had done, helped her to pack up her box, and sent her away with many kind wishes to Curzon Street in a cab.
 Esther was full of the adventure and the golden prospect before her. She wondered if the house she was going to was as grand as Woodview, and she was struck by the appearance of the maidservant who opened the door to her.
 “Oh, here you are,” Mrs. Rivers said. “I have been anxiously expecting you; my baby is not at all well. Come up to the nursery at once. I don’t know your name,” she said, turning to Esther.
 “Waters, ma’am.”
 “Emily, you’ll see that Waters’ box is taken to her room.”
 “I’ll see to it, ma’am.”
 “Then come up at once, Waters. I hope you’ll succeed better than the others.”
 A tall, handsome gentleman stood at the door of a room full of beautiful things, and as they went past him Mrs. Rivers said, “This is the new nurse, dear.” Higher up, Esther saw a bedroom of soft hangings and bright porcelain. Then another staircase, and the little wail of a child caught on the ear, and Mrs. Rivers said, “The poor little thing; it never ceases crying. Take it, Waters, take it.”
 Esther sat down, and soon the little thing ceased crying.
 “It seems to take to you,” said the anxious mother.
 “So it seems,” said Esther; “it is a wee thing, not half the size of my boy.”
 “I hope the milk will suit it, and that it won’t bring up what it takes.
This is our last chance.”
“I daresay it will come round, ma’am. I suppose you weren’t strong enough to nurse it yourself, and yet you looks healthy.”
 “I? No, I could not undertake to nurse it.” Then, glancing suspiciously at Esther, whose breast was like a little cup, Mrs. Rivers said, “I hope you have plenty of milk?”
 “Oh, yes, ma’am; they said at the hospital I could bring up twins.”
 “Your supper will be ready at nine. But that will be a long time for you to wait. I told them to cut you some sandwiches, and you’ll have a glass of porter. Or perhaps you’d prefer to wait till supper? You can have your supper, you know, at eight, if you like?”
 Esther took a sandwich and Mrs. Rivers poured out a glass of porter. And later in the evening Mrs. Rivers came down from her drawing-room to see that Esther’s supper was all right, and not satisfied with the handsome fare that had been laid before her child’s nurse, she went into the kitchen and gave strict orders that the meat for the future was not to be quite so much cooked.
 Henceforth it seemed to Esther that she was eating all day. The food was doubtless necessary after the great trial of the flesh she had been through, likewise pleasant after her long abstinences. She grew happy in the tide of new blood flowing in her veins, and might easily have abandoned herself in the seduction of these carnal influences. But her moral nature was of tough fibre, and made mute revolt. Such constant mealing did not seem natural, and the obtuse brain of this lowly servant-girl was perplexed. Her self-respect was wounded; she hated her position in this house, and sought consolation in the thought that she was earning good money for her baby. She noticed, too, that she never was allowed out alone, and that her walks were limited to just sufficient exercise to keep her in health.
 A fortnight passed, and one afternoon, after having put baby to sleep, she said to Mrs. Rivers, “I hope, ma’am, you’ll be able to spare me for a couple of hours; baby won’t want me before then. I’m very anxious about my little one.”
 “Oh, nurse, I couldn’t possibly hear of it; such a thing is never allowed. You can write to the woman, if you like.”
“I do not know how to write, ma’am.”
 “Then you can get some one to write for you. But your baby is no doubt all right.”
 “But, ma’am, you are uneasy about your baby; you are up in the nursery twenty times a day; it is only natural I should be uneasy about mine.”
 “But, nurse, I’ve no one to send with you.”
 “There is no reason why any one should go with me, ma’am; I can take care of myself.”
 “What! let you go off all the way to — where did you say you had left it — Wandsworth? — by yourself! I really couldn’t think of it. I don’t want to be unnecessarily hard — but I really couldn’t — no mother could. I must consider the interests of my child. But I don’t want you to agitate yourself, and if you like I’ll write myself to the woman who has charge of your baby. I cannot do more, and I hope you’ll be satisfied.”
 By what right, by what law, was she separated from her child? She was tired of hearing Mrs. Rivers speak of “my child, my child, my child,” and of seeing this fine lady turn up her nose when she spoke of her own beautiful boy. When Mrs. Rivers came to engage her she had said that it would be better for the baby to be brought to see her every three or four weeks, for two had died already. At the time Esther had not understood. She had supposed vaguely, in a passing way, that Mrs. Rivers had already lost two children. But yesterday the housemaid had told her that that little thing in the cradle had had two wet-nurses before Esther, and that both babies had died. It was then a life for a life. It was more. The children of two poor girls had been sacrificed so that this rich woman’s child might be saved. Even that was not enough, the life of her beautiful boy was called for. Then other memories swept into Esther’s frenzied brain. She remembered vague hints, allusions that Mrs. Spires had thrown out; and as if in the obtuseness of a nightmare, it seemed to this ignorant girl that she was the victim of a dark and far-reaching conspiracy; she experienced the sensation of the captured animal, and she scanned the doors and windows, thinking of some means of escape.
 At that moment a knock was heard and the housemaid came in.
 “The woman who has charge of your baby has come to see you.”
 Esther started up from her chair, and fat little Mrs. Spires waddled into the room, the ends of her shawl touching the ground.
 “Where is my baby?” said Esther. “Why haven’t you brought him?”
 “Why, you see, my dear, the sweet little thing didn’t seem as well as usual this afternoon, and I did not care to bring him out, it being a long way and a trifle cold .... It is nice and warm in here. May I sit down?”
 “Yes, there’s a chair; but tell me what is the matter with him?”
 “A little cold, dear — nothing to speak of. You must not excite yourself, it isn’t worth while; besides, it’s bad for you and the little darling in the cradle. May I have a look? ... A little girl, isn’t it?”
 “Yes, it is a girl.”
 “And a beautiful little girl too. ’ow ’ealthy she do look! I’ll be bound you have made a difference in her. I suppose you are beginning to like her just as if she was your own?”
 Esther did not answer.
 “Yer know, all you girls are dreadful taken with their babies at first. But they is a awful drag on a girl who gets her living in service. For my part I do think it providential-like that rich folk don’t nurse their own. If they did, I dunno what would become of all you poor girls. The situation of wet-nurse is just what you wants at the time, and it is good money. I hope yer did what I told you and stuck out for a pound a week. Rich folk like these here would think nothing of a pound a week, nor yet two, when they sees their child is suited.”
 “Never mind about my money, that’s my affair. Tell me what’s the matter with my baby?”
 “& ’ow yer do ’arp on it! I’ve told yer that ’e’s all right; nothing to signify, only a little poorly, but knowing you was that anxious I thought it better to come up. I didn’t know but what you might like to ’ave in the doctor.”
 “Does he require the doctor? I thought you said it was nothing to signify.”
 “That depends on ’ow yer looks at it. Some likes to ’ave in the doctor, however little the ailing; then others won’t ’ave anything to do with doctors — don’t believe in them. So I thought I’d come up and see what you thought about it. I would ’ave sent for the doctor this morning — I’m one of those who ’as faith in doctors — but being a bit short of money I thought I’d come up and ask you for a trifle.”
 At that moment Mrs. Rivers came into the nursery and her first look went in the direction of the cradle, then she turned to consider curtseying Mrs. Spires.
 “This is Mrs. Spires, the lady who is looking after my baby, ma’am,” said Esther; “she has come with bad news — my baby is ill.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. But I daresay it is nothing.”
 “But Mrs. Spires says, ma’am —”
 “Yes, ma’am, the little thing seemed a bit poorly, and I being short of money, ma’am, I had to come and see nurse. I knows right well that they must not be disturbed, and of course your child’s ’ealth is everything; but if I may make so bold I’d like to say that the little dear do look beautiful. Nurse is bringing her up that well that yer must have every satisfaction in ’er.”
 “Yes, she seems to suit the child; that’s the reason I don’t want her upset.”
 “It won’t occur again, ma’am, I promise you.”
 Esther did not answer, and her white, sullen face remained unchanged. She had a great deal on her mind, and would have spoken if the words did not seem to betray her when she attempted to speak.
 “When the baby is well, and the doctor is satisfied there is no danger of infection, you can bring it here — once a month will be sufficient. Is there anything more?”
 “Mrs. Spires thinks my baby ought to see the doctor.”
 “Well, let her send for the doctor.”
 “Being a bit short of money —”
 “How much is it?” said Esther.
 “Well, what we pays is five shillings to the doctor, but then there’s the medicine he will order, and I was going to speak to you about a piece of flannel; if yer could let me have ten shillings to go on with.”
 “But I haven’t so much left. I must see my baby,” and Esther moved towards the door.
 “No, no, nurse, I cannot hear of it; I’d sooner pay the money myself. Now, how much do you want, Mrs. Spires?”
 “Ten shillings will do for the present, ma’am.”
 “Here they are; let the child have every attendance, and remember you are not to come troubling my nurse. Above all, you are not to come up to the nursery. I don’t know how it happened, it was a mistake on the part of the new housemaid. You must have my permission before you see my nurse.” And while talking rapidly and imperatively Mrs. Rivers, as it were, drove Mrs. Spires out of the nursery. Esther could hear them talking on the staircase, and she listened, all the while striving to collect her thoughts. Mrs. Rivers said when she returned, “I really cannot allow her to come here upsetting you.” Then, as if impressed by the sombre look on Esther’s face, she added: “Upsetting you about nothing. I assure you it will be all right; only a little indisposition.”
 “I must see my baby,” Esther replied.
 “Come, nurse, you shall see your baby the moment the doctor says it is fit to come here. You can’t expect me to do more than that.” Esther did not move, and thinking that it would not be well to argue with her, Mrs. Rivers went over to the cradle. “See, nurse, the little darling has just woke up; come and take her, I’m sure she wants you.”
 Esther did not answer her. She stood looking into space, and it seemed to Mrs. Rivers that it would be better not to provoke a scene. She went towards the door slowly, but a little cry from the cradle stopped her, and she said —
 “Come, nurse, what is it? Come, the baby is waiting for you.”
 Then, like one waking from a dream, Esther said: “If my baby is all right, ma’am, I’ll come back, but if he wants me, I’ll have to look after him first.”
 “You forget that I’m paying you fifteen shillings a week. I pay you for nursing my baby; you take my money, that’s sufficient.”
 “Yes, I do take your money, ma’am. But the housemaid has told me that you had two wet-nurses before me, and that both their babies died, so I cannot stop here now that mine’s ill. Everyone for her own; you can’t blame me. I’m sorry for yours — poor little thing, she was getting on nicely too.”
 “But, Waters, you won’t leave my baby. It’s cruel of you. If I could nurse it myself —”
 “Why couldn’t you, ma’am? You look fairly strong and healthy.”
 Esther spoke in her quiet, stolid way, finding her words unconsciously.
 “You don’t know what you’re saying, nurse; you can’t .... You’ve forgotten yourself. Next time I engage a nurse I’ll try to get one who has lost her baby, and then there’ll be no bother.”
 “It is a life for a life — more than that, ma’am — two lives for a life; and now the life of my boy is asked for.”
 A strange look passed over Mrs. Rivers’ face. She knew, of course, that she stood well within the law, that she was doing no more than a hundred other fashionable women were doing at the same moment; but this plain girl had a plain way of putting things, and she did not care for it to be publicly known that the life of her child had been bought with the lives of two poor children. But her temper was getting the better of her.
 “He’ll only be a drag on you. You’ll never be able to bring him up, poor little bastard child.”
 “It is wicked of you to speak like that, ma’am, though it is I who am saying it. It is none of the child’s fault if he hasn’t got a father, nor is it right that he should be deserted for that ... and it is not for you to tell me to do such a thing. If you had made sacrifice of yourself in the beginning and nursed your own child such thoughts would not have come to you. But when you hire a poor girl such as me to give the milk that belongs to another to your child, you think nothing of the poor deserted one. He is but a bastard, you say, and had better be dead and done with. I see it all now; I have been thinking it out. It is all so hidden up that the meaning is not clear at first, but what it comes to is this, that fine folks like you pays the money, and Mrs. Spires and her like gets rid of the poor little things. Change the milk a few times, a little neglect, and the poor servant girl is spared the trouble of bringing up her baby and can make a handsome child of the rich woman’s little starveling.”
 At that moment the baby began to cry; both women looked in the direction of the cradle.
 “Nurse, you have utterly forgotten yourself, you have talked a great deal of nonsense, you have said a great deal that is untrue. You accused me of wishing your baby were dead, indeed I hardly know what wild remarks you did not indulge in. Of course, I cannot put up with such conduct — to-morrow you will come to me and apologise. In the meantime the baby wants you, are you not going to her?”
 “I’m going to my own child.”
 “That means that you refuse to nurse my baby?”
 “Yes, I’m going straight to look after my own.”
 “If you leave my house you shall never enter it again.”
 “I don’t want to enter it again.”
 “I shall not pay you one shilling if you leave my baby. You have no money.”
 “I shall try to manage without. I shall go with my baby to the workhouse. However bad the living may be there, he’ll be with his mother.”
“If you go to-night my baby will die. She cannot be brought up on the bottle.”
 “Oh, I hope not, ma’am. I should be sorry, indeed I should.”
 “Then stay, nurse.”
 “I must go to my baby, ma’am.”
 “Then you shall go at once — this very instant.”
 “I’m going this very instant, as soon as I’ve put on my hat and jacket.”
 “You had better take your box with you. If you don’t I’ll shall have it thrown into the street.”
 “I daresay you’re cruel enough to do that if the law allows you, only be careful that it do.

XIX
THE MOMENT Esther got out of the house in Curzon Street she felt in her pocket for her money. She had only a few pence; enough for her ‘bus fare, however, and her thoughts did not go further. She was absorbed by one desire, how to save her child — how to save him from Mrs. Spires, whom she vaguely suspected; from the world, which called him a bastard and denied to him the right to live. And she sat as if petrified in the corner of the ‘bus, seeing nothing but a little street of four houses, facing some haylofts, the low-pitched kitchen, the fat woman, the cradle in the corner. The intensity and the oneness of her desire seemed to annihilate time, and when she got out of the omnibus she walked with a sort of animal-like instinct straight for the house. There was a light in the kitchen just as she expected, and as she descended the four wooden steps into the area she looked to see if Mrs. Spires was there. She was there, and Esther pushed open the door.
 “Where’s my baby?”
 “Lord, ’ow yer did frighten me!” said Mrs. Spires, turning from the range and leaning against the table, which was laid for supper. “Coming like that into other folk’s places without a word of warning — without as much as knocking at the door.”
 “I beg your pardon, but I was that anxious about my baby.”
 “Was you indeed? It is easy to see it is the first one. There it is in the cradle there.”
 “Have you sent for the doctor?”
 “Sent for the doctor! I’ve to get my husband’s supper.”
 Esther took her baby out of the cradle. It woke up crying, and Esther said, “You don’t mind my sitting down a moment. The poor little thing wants its mother.”
 “If Mrs. Rivers saw you now a-nursing of yer baby?”
 “I shouldn’t care if she did. He’s thinner than when I left him; ten days ’ave made a difference in him.”
 “Well, yer don’t expect a child to do as well without its mother as with her. But tell me, how did yer get out? You must have come away shortly after me.”
 “I wasn’t going to stop there and my child ill.”
 “Yer don’t mean to tell me that yer ’ave gone and thrown hup the situation?”
 “She told me if I went out, I should never enter her door again.”
 “And what did you say?”
 “Told her I didn’t want to.”
 “And what, may I ask, are yer thinking of doing? I ’eard yer say yer ’ad no money.”
 “I don’t know.”
 “Take my advice, and go straight back and ask ’er to overlook it, this once.”
 “Oh, no, she’d never take me back.”
 “Yes, she will; you suits the child, and that’s all they think of.”
 “I don’t know what will become of me and my baby.”
 “No more don’t I. Yer can’t stop always in the work’us, and a baby’ll be a ’eavy drag on you. Can’t you lay ’ands on ’is father, some& ’ow?”
 Esther shook her head, and Mrs. Spires noticed that she was crying.
 “I’m all alone,” she said; “I don’t know ’ow I’m ever to pull through.”
 “Not with that child yer won’t — it ain’t possible .... You girls is all alike, yer thinks of nothing but yer babies for the first few weeks, then yer tires of them, the drag on yer is that ’eavy — I knows yer — and then yer begins to wish they ’ad never been born, or yer wishes they had died afore they knew they was alive. I don’t say I’m not often sorry for them, poor little dears, but they takes less notice than you’d think for, and they is better out of the way; they really is, it saves a lot of trouble hereafter. I often do think that to neglect them, to let them go off quiet, that I be their best friend; not wilful neglect, yer know, but what is a woman to do with ten or a dozen, and I often ’as as many? I am sure they’d thank me for it.”
 Esther did not answer, but judging by her face that she had lost all hope,
Mrs. Spires was tempted to continue.
“There’s that other baby in the far corner, that was brought ’ere since you was ’ere by a servant-girl like yerself. She’s out a’nursing of a lady’s child, getting a pound a week, just as you was; well, now I asks ’ow she can ’ope to bring up that ’ere child — a weakly little thing that wants the doctor and all sorts of looking after. If that child was to live it would be the ruin of that girl’s life. Don’t yer ’ear what I’m saying?”
 “Yes, I hear,” said Esther, speaking like one in a dream; “don’t she care for her baby, then?”
 “She used to care for them, but if they had all lived I should like to know where she’d be. There ’as been five of them — that’s the fifth — so, instead of them a-costing ’er money, they brings ’er money. She ’as never failed yet to suit ’erself in a situation as wet-nurse.”
 “And they all died?”
 “Yes, they all died; and this little one don’t look as if it was long for the world, do it?” said Mrs. Spires, who had taken the infant from the cradle to show Esther. Esther looked at the poor wizened features, twitched with pain, and the far-off cry of doom, a tiny tinkle from the verge, shivered in the ear with a strange pathos.
 “It goes to my ’eart,” said Mrs. Spires, “it do indeed, but, Lord, it is the best that could ’appen to ’em; who’s to care for ’em? and there is ’undreds and ’undreds of them — ay, thousands and thousands every year — and they all dies like the early shoots. It is ’ard, very ’ard, poor little dears, but they is best out of the way — they is only an expense and a disgrace.”
 Mrs. Spires talked on in a rapid, soothing, soporific voice. She had just finished pouring some milk in the baby’s bottle and had taken down a jug of water from the dresser.
 “But that’s cold water,” said Esther, waking from the stupor of her despair; “it will give the baby gripes for certain.”
 “I’ve no ’ot water ready; I’ll let the bottle stand afore the fire, that’ll do as well.” Watching Esther all the while, Mrs. Spires held the bottle a few moments before the fire, and then gave it to the child to suck. Very soon after a cry of pain came from the cradle.
 “The little dear never was well; it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it died — went off before morning. It do look that poorly. One can’t ’elp being sorry for them, though one knows there is no ’ouse for them ’ere. Poor little angels, and not even baptised. There’s them that thinks a lot of getting that over. But who’s to baptise the little angels?”
 “Baptise them?” Esther repeated. “Oh, sprinkle them, you mean. That’s not the way with the Lord’s people;” and to escape from a too overpowering reality she continued to repeat the half-forgotten patter of the Brethren, “You must wait until it is a symbol of living faith in the Lord!” And taking the baby in her hands for a moment, the wonder crossed her mind whether he would ever grow up and find salvation and testify to the Lord as an adult in voluntary baptism.
 All the while Mrs. Spires was getting on with her cooking. Several times she looked as if she were going to speak, and several times she checked herself. In truth, she didn’t know what to make of Esther. Was her love of her child such love as would enable her to put up with all hardships for its sake, or was it the fleeting affection of the ordinary young mother, which, though ardent at first, gives way under difficulties? Mrs. Spires had heard many mothers talk as Esther talked, but when the real strain of life was put upon them they had yielded to the temptation of ridding themselves of their burdens. So Mrs. Spires could not believe that Esther was really different from the others, and if carefully handled she would do what the others had done. Still, there was something in Esther which kept Mrs. Spires from making any distinct proposal. But it were a pity to let the girl slip through her fingers — five pounds were not picked up every day. There were three five-pound notes in the cradles. If Esther would listen to reason there would be twenty pounds, and the money was wanted badly. Once more greed set Mrs. Spires’ tongue flowing, and, representing herself as a sort of guardian angel, she spoke again about the mother of the dying child, pressing Esther to think what the girl’s circumstances would have been if they had all lived.
 “And they all died?” said Esther.
 “Yes, and a good job, too,” said Mrs. Spires, whose temper for the moment outsped her discretion. Was this penniless drab doing it on purpose to annoy her? A nice one indeed to high-and-mighty it over her. She would show her in mighty quick time she had come to the wrong shop. Just as Mrs. Spires was about to speak out she noticed that Esther was in tears. Mrs. Spires always looked upon tears as a good sign, so she resolved to give her one more chance. “What are you crying about?” she said.
 “Oh,” said Esther, “I don’t even know where I shall sleep tonight. I have only threepence, and not a friend in the world.”
 “Now look ’ere, if you’ll listen to reason I’ll talk to you. Yer mustn’t look upon me as a henemy. I’ve been a good friend to many a poor girl like you afore now, and I’ll be one to you if you’re sensible. I’ll do for you what I’m doing for the other girl. Give me five pounds — ”
 “Five pounds! I’ve only a few pence.”
 “‘Ear me out. Go back to yer situation — she’ll take you back, yer suits the child, that’s all she cares about; ask ’er for an advance of five pounds; she’ll give it when she ’ears it is to get rid of yer child — they ’ates their nurses to be a-’ankering after their own, they likes them to be forgotten like; they asks if the child is dead very often, and won’t engage them if it isn’t, so believe me she’ll give yer the money when yer tells ’er that it is to give the child to someone who wants to adopt it. That’s what you ’as to say.”
 “And you’ll take the child off my hands for ever for five pounds?”
 “Yes; and if you likes to go out again as wet-nurse, I’ll take the second off yer ’ands too, and at the same price.”
 “You wicked woman; oh, this is awful!”
 “Come, come .... What do you mean by talking to me like that? And because I offered to find someone who would adopt your child.”
 “You did nothing of the kind; ever since I’ve been in your house you have been trying to get me to give you up my child to murder as you are murdering those poor innocents in the cradles.”
 “It is a lie, but I don’t want no hargument with yer; pay me what you owe me and take yerself hoff. I want no more of yer, do you ’ear?”
 Esther did not shrink before her as Mrs. Spires expected. Clasping her baby more tightly, she said: “I’ve paid you what I owe you, you’ve had more than your due. Mrs. Rivers gave you ten shillings for a doctor which you didn’t send for. Let me go.”
 “Yes, when yer pays me.”
 “What’s all this row about?” said a tall, red-bearded man who had just come in; “no one takes their babies out of this ’ere ’ouse before they pays. Come now, come now, who are yer getting at? If yer thinks yer can come here insulting of my wife yer mistaken; yer’ve come to the wrong shop.”
 “I’ve paid all I owe,” said Esther. “You’re no better than murderers, but yer shan’t have my poor babe to murder for a five-pound note.”
 “Take back them words, or else I’ll do for yer; take them back,” he said, raising his fist.
 “Help, help, murder!” Esther screamed. Before the brute could seize her she had slipped past, but before she could scream again he had laid hold of her. Esther thought her last moment had come.
 “Let ’er go, let ’er go,” cried Mrs. Spires, clinging on her husband’s arm. “We don’t want the perlice in ’ere.”
 “Perlice! What do I care about the perlice? Let ’er pay what she owes.”
 “Never mind, Tom; it is only a trifle. Let her go. Now then, take yer hook,” she said, turning to Esther; “we don’t want nothing to do with such as you.”
 With a growl the man loosed his hold, and feeling herself free Esther rushed through the open doorway. Her feet flew up the wooden steps and she ran out of the street. So shaken were her nerves that the sight of some men drinking in a public-house frightened her. She ran on again. There was a cab-stand in the next street, and to avoid the cabmen and the loafers she hastily crossed to the other side. Her heart beat violently, her thoughts were in disorder, and she walked a long while before she realised that she did not know where she was going. She stopped to ask the way, and then remembered there was no place where she might go.
 She would have to spend the night in the workhouse, and then?
 She did not know .... All sorts of thoughts came upon her unsolicited, and she walked on and on. At last she rested her burden on the parapet of a bridge, and saw the London night, blue and gold, vast water rolling, and the spectacle of the stars like a dream from which she could not disentangle her individuality. Was she to die in the star-lit city, she and her child; and why should such cruelty happen to her more than to the next one? Steadying her thoughts with an effort, she said, “Why not go to the workhouse, only for the night? ... She did not mind for herself, only she did not wish her boy to go there. But if God willed it ....”
 She drew her shawl about her baby and tried once more to persuade herself into accepting the shelter of the workhouse. It seemed strange even to her that a pale, glassy moon should float high up in the sky, and that she should suffer; and then she looked at the lights that fell like golden daggers from the Surrey shore into the river. What had she done to deserve the workhouse? Above all, what had the poor, innocent child done to deserve it? She felt that if she once entered the workhouse she would remain there. She and her child paupers for ever. “But what can I do?” she asked herself crazily, and sat down on one of the seats.
 A young man coming home from an evening party looked at her as he passed. She asked herself if she should run after him and tell him her story. Why should he not assist her? He could so easily spare it. Would he? But before she could decide to appeal to him he had called a passing hansom and was soon far away. Then looking at the windows of the great hotels, she thought of the folk there who could so easily save her from the workhouse if they knew. There must be many a kind heart behind those windows who would help her if she could only make known her trouble. But that was the difficulty. She could not make known her trouble; she could not tell the misery she was enduring. She was so ignorant; she could not make herself understood. She would be mistaken for a common beggar. Nowhere would she find anyone to listen to her. Was this punishment for her wrong-doing? An idea of the blind cruelty of fate maddened her, and in the delirium of her misery she asked herself if it would not have been better, perhaps, if she had left him with Mrs. Spires. What indeed had the poor little fellow to live for? A young man in evening dress came towards her, looking so happy and easy in life, walking with long, swinging strides. He stopped and asked her if she was out for a walk.
 “No, sir; I’m out because I’ve no place to go.”
 “How’s that?”
 She told him the story of the baby-farmer and he listened kindly, and she thought the necessary miracle was about to happen. But he only complimented her on her pluck and got up to go. Then she understood that he did not care to listen to sad stories, and a vagrant came and sat down.
 “The ‘copper,’” he said, “will be moving us on presently. It don’t much matter; it’s too cold to get to sleep, and I think it will rain. My cough is that bad.”
 She might beg a night’s lodging of Mrs. Jones. It was far away; she did not think she could walk so far. Mrs. Jones might have left, then what would she do? The workhouse up there was much the same as the workhouse down here. Mrs. Jones couldn’t keep her for nothing, and there was no use trying for another situation as wet-nurse; the hospital would not recommend her again .... She must go to the workhouse. Then her thoughts wandered. She thought of her father, brothers, and sisters, who had gone to Australia. She wondered if they had yet arrived, if they ever thought of her, if — She and her baby were on their way to the workhouse. They were going to become paupers. She looked at the vagrant — he had fallen asleep. He knew all about the workhouse — should she ask him what it was like? He, too, was friendless. If he had a friend he would not be sleeping on the Embankment. Should she ask him? Poor chap, he was asleep. People were happy when they were asleep.
 A full moon floated high up in the sky, and the city was no more than a faint shadow on the glassy stillness of the night; and she longed to float away with the moon and the river, to be borne away out of sight of this world.
 Her baby grew heavy in her arms, and the vagrant, a bundle of rags thrown forward in a heap, slept at the other end of the bench. But she could not sleep, and the moon whirled on her miserable way. Then the glassy stillness was broken by the measured tramp of the policeman going his rounds. He directed her to Lambeth Workhouse, and as she walked towards Westminster she heard him rousing the vagrant and bidding him move onward.

XX
THOSE who came to the workhouse for servants never offered more than fourteen pounds a year, and these wages would not pay for her baby’s keep out at nurse. Her friend the matron did all she could, but it was always fourteen pounds. “We cannot afford more.” At last an offer of sixteen pounds a year came from a tradesman in Chelsea; and the matron introduced Esther to Mrs. Lewis, a lonely widowed woman, who for five shillings a week would undertake to look after the child. This would leave Esther three pounds a year for dress; three pounds a year for herself.
 What luck!
 The shop was advantageously placed at a street corner. Twelve feet of fronting on the King’s Road, and more than half that amount on the side street, exposed to every view wall papers and stained glass designs. The dwelling-house was over the shop; the shop entrance faced the kerb in the King’s Road.
 The Bingleys were Dissenters. They were ugly, and exacted the uttermost farthing from their customers and their workpeople. Mrs. Bingley was a tall, gaunt woman, with little grey ringlets on either side of her face. She spoke in a sour, resolute voice, when she came down in a wrapper to superintend the cooking. On Sundays she wore a black satin, fastened with a cameo brooch, and round her neck a long gold chain. Then her manners were lofty, and when her husband called “Mother,” she answered testily, “Don’t keep on mothering me.” She frequently stopped him to settle his necktie or collar. All the week he wore the same short jacket; on Sundays he appeared in an ill-fitting frock-coat. His long upper lip was clean shaven, but under his chin there grew a ring of discoloured hair, neither brown nor red, but the neutral tint that hair which does not turn grey acquires. When he spoke he opened his mouth wide, and seemed quite unashamed of the empty spaces and the three or four yellow fangs that remained.
 John, the elder of the two brothers, was a silent youth whose one passion seemed to be eavesdropping. He hung round doors in the hopes of overhearing his sisters’ conversation and if he heard Esther and the little girl who helped Esther in her work talking in the kitchen, he would steal cautiously halfway down the stairs. Esther often thought that his young woman must be sadly in want of a sweetheart to take on with one such as he. “Come along, Amy,” he would cry, passing out before her; and not even at the end of a long walk did he offer her his arm; and they came strolling home just like boy and girl.
 Hubert, John’s younger brother, was quite different. He had escaped the family temperament, as he had escaped the family upper lip. He was the one spot of colour in a somewhat sombre household, and Esther liked to hear him call back to his mother, “All right, mother, I’ve got the key; no one need wait up for me. I’ll make the door fast.”
 “Oh, Hubert, don’t be later than eleven. You are not going out dancing again, are you? Your father will have the electric bell put on the door, so that he may know when you come in.”
 The four girls were all ruddy-complexioned and long upper-lipped. The eldest was the plainest; she kept her father’s books, and made the pastry. The second and third entertained vague hopes of marriage. The youngest was subject to hysterics, fits of some kind.
 The Bingleys’ own house was representative of their ideas, and the taste they had imposed upon the neighbourhood. The staircase was covered with white drugget, and the white enamelled walls had to be kept scrupulously clean. There were no flowers in the windows, but the springs of the blinds were always in perfect order. The drawing-room was furnished with substantial tables, cabinets and chairs, and antimacassars, long and wide, and china ornaments and glass vases. There was a piano, and on this instrument, every Sunday evening, hymns were played by one of the young ladies, and the entire family sang in the chorus.
 It was into this house that Esther entered as general servant, with wages fixed at sixteen pounds a year. And for seventeen long hours every day, for two hundred and thirty hours every fortnight, she washed, she scrubbed, she cooked, she ran errands, with never a moment that she might call her own. Every second Sunday she was allowed out for four, perhaps for four and a half hours; the time fixed was from three to nine, but she was expected to be back in time to get the supper ready, and if it were many minutes later than nine there were complaints.
 She had no money. Her quarter’s wages would not be due for another fortnight, and as they did not coincide with her Sunday out, she would not see her baby for another three weeks. She had not seen him for a month, and a great longing was in her heart to clasp him in her arms again, to feel his soft cheek against hers, to take his chubby legs and warm, fat feet in her hands. The four lovely hours of liberty would slip by, she would enter on another long fortnight of slavery. But no matter, only to get them, however quickly they sped from her. She resigned herself to her fate, her soul rose in revolt, and it grew hourly more difficult for her to renounce this pleasure. She must pawn her dress — the only decent dress she had left. No matter, she must see the child. She would be able to get the dress out of pawn when she was paid her wages. Then she would have to buy herself a pair of boots; and she owed Mrs. Lewis a good deal of money. Five shillings a week came to thirteen pound a year, leaving her three pound a year for boots and clothes, journeys back and forward, and everything the baby might want. Oh, it was not to be done — she never would be able to pull through. She dare not pawn her dress; if she did she’d never be able to get it out again. At that moment something bright lying on the floor, under the basin-stand, caught her eye. It was half-a-crown. She looked at it, and as the temptation came into her heart to steal, she raised her eyes and looked round the room.
 She was in John’s room — in the sneak’s room. No one was about. She would have cut off one of her fingers for the coin. That half-crown meant pleasure and a happiness so tender and seductive that she closed her eyes for a moment. The half-crown she held between forefinger and thumb presented a ready solution of the besetting difficulty. She threw out the insidious temptation, but it came quickly upon her again. If she did not take the half-crown she would not be able to go Peckham on Sunday. She could replace the money where she found it when she was paid her wages. No one knew it was there; it had evidently rolled there, and having tumbled between the carpet and the wall had not been discovered. It had probably lain there for months, perhaps it was utterly forgotten. Besides, she need not take it now. It would be quite safe if she put it back in its place; on Sunday afternoon she would take it, and if she changed it at once — It was not marked. She examined it all over. No, it was not marked. Then the desire paused, and she wondered how she, an honest girl, who had never harboured a dishonest thought in her life before, could desire to steal; a bitter feeling of shame came upon her.
 It was a case of flying from temptation, and she left the room so hurriedly that John, who was spying in the passage, had not time either to slip downstairs or to hide in his brother’s room. They met face to face.
 “Oh, I beg pardon, sir, but I found this half-crown in your room.”
 “Well, there’s nothing wonderful in that. What are you so agitated about? I suppose you intended to return it to me?”
“Intended to return it! Of course.”
 An expression of hate and contempt leaped into her handsome grey eyes, and, like a dog’s, the red lip turned down. She suddenly understood that this pasty-faced, despicable chap had placed the coin where it might have accidentally rolled, where she would be likely to find it. He had complained that morning that she did not keep his room sufficiently clean! It was a carefully-laid plan, he was watching her all the while, and no doubt thought that it was his own indiscretion that had prevented her from falling into the snare. Without a word Esther dropped the half-crown at his feet and returned to her work; and all the time she remained in her present situation she persistently refused to speak to him; she brought him what he asked for, but never answered him, even with a Yes or No.
 It was during the few minutes’ rest after dinner that the burden of the day pressed heaviest upon her; then a painful weariness grew into her limbs, and it seemed impossible to summon strength and will to beat carpets or sweep down the stairs. But if she were not moving about before the clock struck, Mrs. Bingley came down to the kitchen.
 “Now, Esther, is there nothing for you to do?”
 And again, about eight o’clock, she felt too tired to bear the weight of her own flesh. She had passed through fourteen hours of almost unintermittent toil, and it seemed to her that she would never be able to summon up sufficient courage to get through the last three hours. It was this last summit that taxed all her strength and all her will. Even the rest that awaited her at eleven o’clock was blighted by the knowledge of the day that was coming; and its cruel hours, long and lean and hollow-eyed, stared at her through the darkness. She was often too tired to rest, and rolled over and over in her miserable garret bed, her whole body aching. Toil crushed all that was human out of her; even her baby was growing indifferent to her. If it were to die! She did not desire her baby’s death, but she could not forget what the baby-farmer had told her — the burden would not become lighter, it would become heavier and heavier. What would become of her? Was there no hope? She buried her face in her pillow, seeking to escape from the passion of her despair. She was an unfortunate girl, and had missed all her chances.
 In the six months she had spent in the house in Chelsea her nature had been strained to the uttermost, and what we call chance now came to decide the course of her destiny. The fight between circumstances and character had gone till now in favour of character, but circumstances must call up no further forces against character. A hair would turn the scale either way. One morning she was startled out of her sleep by a loud knocking at the door. It was Mrs. Bingley, who had come to ask her if she knew what time it was. It was nearly seven o’clock. But Mrs. Bingley could not blame her much, having herself forgotten to put on the electric bell, and Esther hurried through her dressing. But in hurrying she happened to tread on her dress, tearing it right across. It was most unfortunate, and just when she was most in a hurry. She held up the torn skirt. It was a poor, frayed, worn-out rag that would hardly bear mending again. Her mistress was calling her; there was nothing for it but to run down and tell her what had happened.
 “Haven’t you got another dress that you can put on?”
 “No, ma’am.”
 “Really, I can’t have you going to the door in that thing. You don’t do credit to my house; you must get yourself a new dress at once.”
 Esther muttered that she had no money to buy one.
 “Then I don’t know what you do with your money.”
 “What I do with my wages is my affair; I’ve plenty of use for my money.”
 “I cannot allow any servant of mine to speak to me like that.”
 Esther did not answer, and Mrs. Bingley continued —
 “It is my duty to know what you do with your money, and to see that you do not spend it in any wrong way. I am responsible for your moral welfare.”
 “Then, ma’am, I think I had better leave you.”
 “Leave me, because I don’t wish you to spend your money wrongfully, because I know the temptations that a young girl’s life is beset with?”
 “There ain’t much chance of temptation for them who work seventeen hours a day.”
 “Esther, you seem to forget — ”
 “No, ma’am; but there’s no use talking about what I do with my money — there are other reasons; the place is too hard a one. I’ve felt it so for some time, ma’am. My health ain’t equal to it.”
 Once she had spoken, Esther showed no disposition to retract, and she steadily resisted all Mrs. Bingley’s solicitations to remain with her. She knew the risk she was running in leaving her situation, and yet she felt she must yield to an instinct like that which impels the hunted animal to leave the cover and seek safety in the open country. Her whole body cried out for rest, she must have rest; that was the thing that must be. Mrs. Lewis would keep her and her baby for twelve shillings a week; the present was the Christmas quarter, and she was richer by five and twenty shillings than she had been before. Mrs. Bingley had given her ten shillings, Mr. Hubert five, and the other ten had been contributed by the four young ladies. Out of this money she hoped to be able to buy a dress and a pair of boots, as well as a fortnight’s rest with Mrs. Lewis. She had determined on her plans some three weeks before her month’s warning would expire, and henceforth the mountainous days of her servitude drew out interminably, seeming more than ever exhausting, and the longing in her heart to be free at times rose to her head, and her brain turned as if in delirium. Every time she sat down to a meal she remembered she was so many hours nearer to rest — a fortnight’s rest — she could not afford more; but in her present slavery that fortnight seemed at once as a paradise and an eternity. Her only fear was that her health might give way, and that she would be laid up during the time she intended for rest — personal rest. Her baby was lost sight of. Even a mother demands something in return for her love, and in the last year Jackie had taken much and given nothing. But when she opened Mrs. Lewis’s door he came running to her, calling her Mummie; and the immediate preference he showed for her, climbing on her knees instead of on Mrs. Lewis’s, was a fresh sowing of love in the mother’s heart.
 They were in the midst of those few days of sunny weather which come in January, deluding us so with their brightness and warmth that we look round for roses and are astonished to see the earth bare of flowers. And these bright afternoons Esther spent entirely with Jackie. At the top of the hill their way led through a narrow passage between a brick wall and a high paling. She had always to carry him through this passage, for the ground there was sloppy and dirty, and the child wanted to stop to watch the pigs through the chinks in the boards. But when they came to the smooth, wide, high roads overlooking the valley, she put him down, and he would run on ahead, crying, “Turn for a walk, Mummie, turn along,” and his little feet went so quickly beneath his frock that it seemed as if he were on wheels. She followed, often forced to break into a run, tremulous lest he should fall. They descended the hill into the ornamental park, and spent happy hours amid geometrically-designed flower-beds and curving walks. She ventured with him as far as the old Dulwich village, and they strolled through the long street. Behind the street were low-lying, shiftless fields, intersected with broken hedges. And when Jackie called to his mother to carry him, she rejoiced in the labour of his weight; and when he grew too heavy, she rested on the farm-gate, and looked into the vague lowlands. And when the chill of night awoke her from her dream she clasped Jackie to her bosom and turned towards home, very soon to lose herself again in another tide of happiness.
 The evenings, too, were charming. When the candles were lighted, and tea was on the table, Esther sat with the dozing child on her knee, looking into the flickering fire, her mind a reverie, occasionally broken by the homely talk of her companion; and when the baby was laid in his cot she took up her sewing — she was making herself a new dress; or else the great kettle was steaming on the hob, and the women stood over the washing-tubs. On the following evening they worked on either side of the ironing-table, the candle burning brightly and their vague woman’s chatter sounding pleasant in the hush of the little cottage. A little after nine they were in bed, and so the days went softly, like happy, trivial dreams. It was not till the end of the third week that Mrs. Lewis would hear of Esther looking out for another place. And then Esther was surprised at her good fortune. A friend of Mrs. Lewis’s knew a servant who was leaving her situation in the West End of London. Esther got the address, and went next day after the place. She was fortunate enough to obtain it, and her mistress seemed well satisfied with her. But one day in the beginning of her second year of service she was told that her mistress wished to speak to her in the dining-room.
 “I fancy,” said the cook, “that it is about that baby of yours; they’re very strict here.”
 Mrs. Trubner was sitting on a low wicker chair by the fire. She was a large woman with eagle features. Her eyesight had been failing for some years, and her maid was reading to her. The maid closed the book and left the room.
 “It has come to my knowledge, Waters, that you have a child. You’re not a married woman, I believe?”
 “I’ve been unfortunate; I’ve a child, but that don’t make no difference so long as I gives satisfaction in my work. I don’t think that the cook has complained, ma’am.”
 “No, the cook hasn’t complained, but had I known this I don’t think I should have engaged you. In the character which you showed me, Mrs. Barfield said that she believed you to be a thoroughly religious girl at heart.”
 “And I hope I am that, ma’am. I’m truly sorry for my fault. I’ve suffered a great deal.”
 “So you all say; but supposing it were to happen again, and in my house?
Supposing —”
“Then don’t you think, ma’am, there is repentance and forgiveness? Our Lord said —”
“You ought to have told me; and as for Mrs. Barfield, her conduct is most reprehensible.”
 “Then, ma’am, would you prevent every poor girl who has had a misfortune from earning her bread? If they was all like you there would be more girls who’d do away with themselves and their babies. You don’t know how hard pressed we are. The baby-farmer says, ‘Give me five pounds and I’ll find a good woman who wants a little one, and you shall hear no more about it.’ Them very words were said to me. I took him away and hoped to be able to rear him, but if I’m to lose my situations —”
 “I should be sorry to prevent anyone from earning their bread —”
 “You’re a mother yourself, ma’am, and you know what it is.”
 “Really, it’s quite different .... I don’t know what you mean, Waters.”
 “I mean that if I am to lose my situations on account of my baby, I don’t know what will become of me. If I give satisfaction — ”
 At that moment Mr. Trubner entered. He was a large, stout man, with his mother’s aquiline features. He arrived with his glasses on his nose, and slightly out of breath.
 “Oh, oh, I didn’t know, mother,” he blurted out, and was about to withdraw when Mrs. Trubner said —
 “This is the new servant whom that lady in Sussex recommended.”
 Esther saw a look of instinctive repulsion come over his face.
 “I’ll leave you to settle with her, mother.”
 “I must speak to you, Harold — I must.”
 “I really can’t; I know nothing of this matter.”
 He tried to leave the room, and when his mother stopped him he said testily, “Well, what is it? I am very busy just now, and — ” Mrs. Trubner told Esther to wait in the passage.
 “Well,” said Mr. Trubner, “have you discharged her? I leave all these things to you.”
 “She has told me her story; she is trying to bring up her child on her wages .... She said if she was kept from earning her bread she didn’t know what would become of her. Her position is a very terrible one.”
 “I know that .... But we can’t have loose women about the place. They all can tell a fine story; the world is full of impostors.”
 “I don’t think the girl is an impostor.”
 “Very likely not, but everyone has a right to protect themselves.”
 “Don’t speak so loud, Harold,” said Mrs. Trubner, lowering her voice. “Remember her child is dependent upon her; if we send her away we don’t know what may happen. I’ll pay her a month’s wages if you like, but you must take the responsibility.”
 “I won’t take any responsibility in the matter. If she had been here two years — she has only been here a year — not so much more — and had proved a satisfactory servant, I don’t say that we’d be justified in sending her away .... There are plenty of good girls who want a situation as much as she. I don’t see why we should harbour loose women when there are so many deserving cases.”
 “Then you want me to send her away?”
 “I don’t want to interfere; you ought to know how to act. Supposing the same thing were to happen again? My cousins, young men, coming to the house — ”
 “But she won’t see them.”
 “Do as you like; it is your business, not mine. It doesn’t matter to me, so long as I’m not interfered with; keep her if you like. You ought to have looked into her character more closely before you engaged her. I think that the lady who recommended her ought to be written to very sharply.”
 They had forgotten to close the door, and Esther stood in the passage burning and choking with shame.
 “It is a strange thing that religion should make some people so unfeeling,” Esther thought as she left Onslow Square.
 It was necessary to keep her child secret, and in her next situation she shunned intimacy with her fellow-servants, and was so strict in her conduct that she exposed herself to their sneers. She dreaded the remark that she always went out alone, and often arrived at the cottage breathless with fear and expectation — at a cottage where a little boy stood by a stout middle-aged woman, turning over the pages of the illustrated papers that his mother had brought him; she had no money to buy him toys. Dropping the Illustrated London News, he cried, “Here is Mummie,” and ran to her with outstretched arms. Ah, what an embrace! Mrs. Lewis continued her sewing, and for an hour or more Esther told about her fellow-servants, about the people she lived with, the conversation interrupted by the child calling his mother’s attention to the pictures, or by the delicate intrusion of his little hand into hers.
 Her clothes were her great difficulty, and she often thought that she would rather go back to the slavery of the house in Chelsea than bear the humiliation of going out any longer on Sunday in the old things that the servants had seen her in for eight or nine months or more. She was made to feel that she was the lowest of the low — the servant of servants. She had to accept everybody’s sneer and everybody’s bad language, and oftentimes gross familiarity, in order to avoid arguments and disputes which might endanger her situation. She had to shut her eyes to the thefts of cooks; she had to fetch them drink, and to do their work when they were unable to do it themselves. But there was no help for it. She could not pick and choose where she would live, and any wages above sixteen pound a year she must always accept, and put up with whatever inconvenience she might meet.
 Hers is an heroic adventure if one considers it — a mother’s fight for the life of her child against all the forces that civilisation arrays against the lowly and the illegitimate. She is in a situation to-day, but on what security does she hold it? She is strangely dependent on her own health, and still more upon the fortunes and the personal caprice of her employers; and she realised the perils of her life when an outcast mother at the corner of the street, stretching out of her rags a brown hand and arm, asked alms for the sake of the little children. Esther remembered then that three months out of a situation and she too would be on the street as a flower-seller, match-seller, or —
 It did not seem, however, that any of these fears were to be realised. Her luck had mended; for nearly two years she had been living with some rich people in the West End; she liked her mistress and was on good terms with her fellow servants, and had it not been for an accident she could have kept this situation. The young gentlemen had come home for their summer holidays; she had stepped aside to let Master Harry pass on the stairs. But he did not go by, and there was a strange smile on his face.
 “Look here, Esther, I’m awfully fond of you. You are the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Come out for a walk with me next Sunday.”
“Master Harry, I’m surprised at you; will you let me go by at once?”
 There was no one near, the house was silent, and the boy stood on the step above her. He tried to throw his arm round her waist, but she shook him off and went up to her room calm with indignation. A few days afterward she suddenly became aware that he was following her in the street. She turned sharply upon him.
 “Master Harry, I know that this is only a little foolishness on your part, but if you don’t leave off I shall lose my situation, and I’m sure you don’t want to do me an injury.”
 Master Harry seemed sorry, and he promised not to follow her in the street again. And never thinking that it was he who had written the letter she received a few days after, she asked Annie, the upper housemaid, to read it. It contained reference to meetings and unalterable affection, and it concluded with a promise to marry her if she lost her situation through his fault. Esther listened like one stunned. A schoolboy’s folly, the first silly sentimentality of a boy, a thing lighter than the lightest leaf that falls, had brought disaster upon her.
 If Annie had not seen the letter she might have been able to get the boy to listen to reason; but Annie had seen the letter, and Annie could not be trusted. The story would be sure to come out, and then she would lose her character as well as her situation. It was a great pity. Her mistress had promised to have her taught cooking at South Kensington, and a cook’s wages would secure her and her child against all ordinary accidents. She would never get such a chance again, and would remain a kitchen-maid to the end of her days. And acting on the impulse of the moment she went straight to the drawing-room. Her mistress was alone, and Esther handed her the letter. “I thought you had better see this at once, ma’am. I did not want you to think it was my fault. Of course the young gentleman means no harm.”
 “Has anyone seen this letter?”
 “I showed it to Annie. I’m no scholar myself, and the writing was difficult.”
 “You have no reason for supposing —How often did Master Harry speak to you in this way?”
 “Only twice, ma’am.”
 “Of course it is only a little foolishness. I needn’t say that he doesn’t mean what he says.”
 “I told him, ma’am, that if he continued I should lose my situation.”
 “I’m sorry to part with you, Esther, but I really think that the best way will be for you to leave. I am much obliged to you for showing me this letter. Master Harry, you see, says that he is going away to the country for a week. He left this morning. So I really think that a month’s wages will settle matters nicely. You are an excellent servant, and I shall be glad to recommend you.”
 Then Esther heard her mistress mutter something about the danger of good-looking servants. And Esther was paid a month’s wages, and left that afternoon.

XXI
IT WAS the beginning of August, and London yawned in every street; the dust blew unslaked, and a little cloud curled and disappeared over the crest of the hill at Hyde Park Corner; the streets and St. George’s Place looked out with blind, white eyes; and in the deserted Park the trees tossed their foliage restlessly, as if they wearied and missed the fashion of their season. And all through Park Lane and Mayfair, caretakers and gaunt cats were the traces that the caste on which Esther depended had left of its departed presence. She was coming from the Alexandra Hotel, where she had heard a kitchen-maid was wanted. Mrs. Lewis had urged her to wait until people began to come back to town. Good situations were rarely obtainable in the summer months; it would be bad policy to take a bad one, even if it were only for a while. Besides, she had saved a little money, and, feeling that she required a rest, had determined to take this advice. But as luck would have it Jackie fell ill before she had been at Dulwich a week. His illness made a big hole in her savings, and it had become evident that she would have to set to work and at once.
 She turned into the park. She was going north, to a registry office near Oxford Street, which Mrs. Lewis had recommended. Holborn Row was difficult to find, and she had to ask the way very often, but she suddenly knew that she was in the right street by the number of servant-girls going and coming from the office, and in company with five others Esther ascended a gloomy little staircase. The office was on the first floor. The doors were open, and they passed into a special odour of poverty, as it were, into an atmosphere of mean interests.
 Benches covered with red plush were on either side, and these were occupied by fifteen or twenty poorly-dressed women. A little old woman, very white and pale, stood near the window recounting her misfortunes to no one in particular.
 “I lived with her more than thirty years; I brought up all the children. I entered her service as nurse, and when the children grew up I was given the management of everything. For the last fifteen years my mistress was a confirmed invalid. She entrusted everything to me. Oftentimes she took my hand and said, ‘You are a good creature, Holmes, you mustn’t think of leaving me; how should I get on without you?’ But when she died they had to part with me; they said they were very sorry, and wouldn’t have thought of doing so, only they were afraid I was getting too old for the work. I daresay I was wrong to stop so long in one situation. I shouldn’t have done so, but she always used to say, ‘You mustn’t leave us; we never shall be able to get on without you.’”
 At that moment the secretary, an alert young woman with a decisive voice, came through the folding doors.
 “I will not have all this talking,” she said. Her quick eyes fell on the little old woman, and she came forward a few steps. “What, you here again,
Miss Holmes? I’ve told you that when I hear of anything that will suit you I’ll write.”
“So you said, Miss, but my little savings are running short. I’m being pressed for my rent.”
 “I can’t help that; when I hear of anything I’ll write. But I can’t have you coming here every third day wasting my time; now run along.” And having made casual remarks about the absurdity of people of that age coming after situations, she called three or four women to her desk, of whom Esther was one. She examined them critically, and seemed especially satisfied with Esther’s appearance.
 “It will be difficult,” she said, “to find you the situation you want before people begin to return to town. If you were only an inch or two taller I could get you a dozen places as housemaid; tall servants are all the fashion, and you are the right age — about five-and-twenty.”
 Esther left a dozen stamps with her, and soon after she began to receive letters containing the addresses of ladies who required servants. They were of all sorts, for the secretary seemed to exercise hardly any discrimination, and Esther was sent on long journeys from Brixton to Notting Hill to visit poor people who could hardly afford a maid-of-all-work. These useless journeys were very fatiguing. Sometimes she was asked to call at a house in Bayswater, and thence she had to go to High Street, Kensington, or Earl’s Court; a third address might be in Chelsea. She could only guess which was the best chance, and while she was hesitating the situation might be given away. Very often the ladies were out, and she was asked to call later in the day. These casual hours she spent in the parks, mending Jackie’s socks or hemming pocket handkerchiefs, so she was frequently delayed till evening; and in the mildness of the summer twilight, with some fresh disappointment lying heavy on her heart, she made her way from the Marble Arch round the barren Serpentine into Piccadilly, with its stream of light beginning in the sunset.
 And standing at the kerb of Piccadilly Circus, waiting for a ‘bus to take her to Ludgate Hill Station, the girl grew conscious of the moving multitude that filled the streets. The great restaurants rose up calm and violet in the evening sky, the Café Monico, with its air of French newspapers and Italian wines; and before the grey façade of the fashionable Criterion hansoms stopped and dinner parties walked across the pavement. The fine weather had brought the women up earlier than usual from the suburbs. They came up the long road from Fulham, with white dresses floating from their hips, and feather boas waving a few inches from the pavement. But through this elegant disguise Esther could pick out the servant-girls. Their stories were her story. They had been deserted, as she had been; and perhaps each had a child to support, only they had not been so lucky as she had been in finding situations.
 But now luck seemed to have deserted her. It was the middle of September and she had not yet been able to find the situation she wanted; and it had become more and more distressing to her to refuse sixteen pound a year. She had calculated it all out, and nothing less than eighteen pound was of any use to her. With eighteen pound and a kind mistress who would give her an old dress occasionally she could do very well. But if she didn’t find these two pounds she did not know what she should do. She might drag on for a time on sixteen pound, but such wages would drive her in the end into the workhouse. If it were not for the child! But she would never desert her darling boy, who loved her so dearly, come what might. A sudden imagination let her see him playing in the little street, waiting for her to come home, and her love for him went to her head like madness. She wondered at herself; it seemed almost unnatural to love anything as she did this child.
 Then, in a shiver of fear, determined to save her ‘bus fare, she made her way through Leicester Square. She was a good-looking girl, who hastened her steps when addressed by a passer-by or crossed the roadway in sullen indignation, and who looked in contempt on the silks and satins which turned into the Empire, and she seemed to lose heart utterly. She had been walking all day and had not tasted food since the morning, and the weakness of the flesh brought a sudden weakness of the spirit. She felt that she could struggle no more, that the whole world was against her — she felt that she must have food and drink and rest. All this London tempted her, and the cup was at her lips. A young man in evening clothes had spoken to her. His voice was soft, the look in his eyes seemed kindly.
 Thinking of the circumstances ten minutes later it seemed to her that she had intended to answer him. But she was now at Charing Cross. There was a lightness, an emptiness in her head which she could not overcome, and the crowd appeared to her like a blurred, noisy dream. And then the dizziness left her, and she realised the temptation she had escaped. Here, as in Piccadilly, she could pick out the servant girls; but here their service was yesterday’s lodging-house — poor and dissipated girls, dressed in vague clothes fixed with hazardous pins. Two young women strolled in front of her. They hung on each other’s arms, talking lazily. They had just come out of an eating-house, and a happy digestion was in their eyes. The skirt on the outside was a soiled mauve, and the bodice that went with it was a soiled chocolate. A broken yellow plume hung out of a battered hat. The skirt on the inside was a dim green, and little was left of the cotton velvet jacket but the cotton. A girl of sixteen walking sturdily, like a little man, crossed the road, her left hand thrust deep into the pocket of her red cashmere dress. She wore on her shoulders a strip of beaded mantle; her hair was plaited and tied with a red ribbon. Corpulent women passed, their eyes liquid with invitation; and the huge bar-loafer, the man of fifty, the hooked nose and the waxed moustache, stood at the door of a restaurant, passing the women in review.
 A true London of the water’s edge — a London of theatres, music-halls, wine-shops, public-houses — the walls painted various colours, nailed over with huge gold lettering; the pale air woven with delicate wire, a gossamer web underneath which the crowd moved like lazy flies, one half watching the perforated spire of St. Mary’s, and all the City spires behind it now growing cold in the east, the other half seeing the spire of St. Martin’s above the chimney-pots aloft in a sky of cream pink. Stalwart policemen urged along groups of slattern boys and girls; and after vulgar remonstrance these took the hint and disappeared down strange passages. Suddenly Esther came face to face with a woman whom she recognised as Margaret Gale.
 “What, is it you, Margaret?”
 “Yes, it is me all right. What are you doing up here? Got tired of service? Come and have a drink, old gal.”
 “No, thank you; I’m glad to have seen you, Margaret, but I’ve a train to catch.”
 “That won’t do,” said Margaret, catching her by the arm; “we must have a drink and a talk over old times.”
 Esther felt that if she did not have something she would faint before she reached Ludgate Hill, and Margaret led the way through the public-house, opening all the varnished doors, seeking a quiet corner. “What’s the matter?” she said, startled at the pallor of Esther’s face.
 “Only a little faintness; I’ve not had anything to eat all day.”
 “Quick, quick, four of brandy and some water,” Margaret cried to the barman, and a moment after she was holding the glass to her friend’s lips. “Not had anything to eat all day, dear? Then we’ll have a bite and a sup together. I feel a bit peckish myself. Two sausages and two rolls and butter,” she cried. Then the women had a long talk. Margaret told Esther the story of her misfortune.
 The Barfields were all broken up. They had been very unlucky racing, and when the servants got the sack Margaret had come up to London. She had been in several situations. Eventually, one of her masters had got her into trouble, his wife had turned her out neck and crop, and what was she to do? Then Esther told how Master Harry had lost her her situation.
 “And you left like that? Well I never! The better one behaves the worse one gets treated, and them that goes on with service find themselves in the end without as much as will buy them a Sunday dinner.”
 Margaret insisted on accompanying Esther, and they walked together as far as Wellington Street. “I can’t go any further,” and pointing to where London seemed to end in a piece of desolate sky, she said, “I live on the other side, in Stamford Street. You might come and see me. If you ever get tired of service you’ll get decent rooms there.”
 Bad weather followed fine, and under a streaming umbrella Esther went from one address to another, her damp skirts clinging about her and her boots clogged with mud. She looked upon the change in the weather as unfortunate, for in getting a situation so much depended on personal appearance and cheerfulness of manner; and it is difficult to seem a right and tidy girl after two miles’ walk through the rain.
 One lady told Esther that she liked tall servants, another said she never engaged good-looking girls, and another place that would have suited her was lost through unconsciously answering that she was chapel. The lady would have nothing in her house but church. Then there were the disappointments occasioned by the letters which she received from people who she thought would have engaged her, saying they were sorry, but that they had seen some one whom they liked better.
 Another week passed and Esther had to pawn her clothes to get money for her train fare to London, and to keep the registry office supplied with stamps. Her prospects had begun to seem quite hopeless, and she lay awake thinking that she and Jackie must go back to the workhouse. They could not stop on at Mrs. Lewis’s much longer. Mrs. Lewis had been very good to them, but Esther owed her two weeks’ money. What was to be done? She had heard of charitable institutions, but she was an ignorant girl and did not know how to make the necessary inquiries. Oh, the want of a little money — of a very little money; the thought beat into her brain. For just enough to hold on till the people came back to town.
 One day Mrs. Lewis, who read the newspapers for her, came to her with an advertisement which she said seemed to read like a very likely chance. Esther looked at the pence which remained out of the last dress that she had pawned.
 “I’m afraid,” she said, “it will turn out like the others; I’m out of my luck.”
 “Don’t say that,” said Mrs. Lewis; “keep your courage up; I’ll stick to you as long as I can.”
 The women had a good cry in each other’s arms, and then Mrs. Lewis advised Esther to take the situation, even if it were no more than sixteen. “A lot can be done by constant saving, and if she gives yer ’er dresses and ten shillings for a Christmas-box, I don’t see why you should not pull through. The baby shan’t cost you more than five shillings a week till you get a situation as plain cook. Here is the address — Miss Rice, Avondale Road, West Kensington.”

XXII
AVONDALE ROAD was an obscure corner of the suburb — obscure, for it had just sprung into existence. The scaffolding that had built it now littered an adjoining field, where in a few months it would rise about Horsely Gardens, whose red gables and tiled upper walls will correspond unfailingly with those of Avondale Road. Nowhere in this neighbourhood could Esther detect signs of eighteen pounds a year. Scanning the Venetian blinds of the single drawing-room window, she said to herself, “Hot joint today, cold the next.” She noted the trim iron railings and the spare shrubs, and raising her eyes she saw the tiny gable windows of the cupboard-like rooms where the single servant kept in these houses slept.
 A few steps more brought her to 41, the corner house. The thin passage and the meagre staircase confirmed Esther in the impression she had received from the aspect of the street; and she felt that the place was more suitable to the gaunt woman with iron-grey hair who waited in the passage. This woman looked apprehensively at Esther, and when Esther said that she had come after the place a painful change of expression passed over her face, and she said —
 “You’ll get it; I’m too old for anything but charing. How much are you going to ask?”
 “I can’t take less than sixteen.”
 “Sixteen! I used to get that once; I’d be glad enough to get twelve now. You can’t think of sixteen once you’ve turned forty, and I’ve lost my teeth, and they means a couple of pound off.”
 Then the door opened, and a woman’s voice called to the gaunt woman to come in. She went in, and Esther breathed a prayer that she might not be engaged. A minute intervened, and the gaunt woman came out; there were tears in her eyes, and she whispered to Esther as she passed, “No good; I told you so. I’m too old for anything but charing.” The abruptness of the interview suggested a hard mistress, and Esther was surprised to find herself in the presence of a slim lady, about seven-and-thirty, whose small grey eyes seemed to express a kind and gentle nature. As she stood speaking to her, Esther saw a tall glass filled with chrysanthemums and a large writing-table covered with books and papers. There was a bookcase, and in place of the usual folding-doors, a bead curtain hung between the rooms.
 The room almost said that the occupant was a spinster and a writer, and Esther remembered that she had noticed even at the time Miss Rice’s manuscript, it was such a beautiful clear round hand, and it lay on the table, ready to be continued the moment she should have settled with her.
 “I saw your advertisement in the paper, miss; I’ve come after the situation.”
 “You are used to service?”
 “Yes, miss, I’ve had several situations in gentlemen’s families, and have excellent characters from them all.” Then Esther related the story of her situations, and Miss Rice put up her glasses and her grey eyes smiled. She seemed pleased with the somewhat rugged but pleasant-featured girl before her.
 “I live alone,” she said; “the place is an easy one, and if the wages satisfy you, I think you will suit me very well. My servant, who has been with me some years, is leaving me to be married.”
 “What are the wages, miss?”
 “Fourteen pounds a year.”
 “I’m afraid, miss, there would be no use my taking the place; I’ve so many calls on my money that I could not manage on fourteen pounds. I’m very sorry, for I feel sure I should like to live with you, miss.”
 But what was the good of taking the place? She could not possibly manage on fourteen, even if Miss Rice did give her a dress occasionally, and that didn’t look likely. All her strength seemed to give way under her misfortune, and it was with difficulty that she restrained her tears.
 “I think we should suit each other,” Miss Rice said reflectively.
 “I should like to have you for my servant if I could afford it. How much would you take?”
 “Situated, as I am, miss, I could not take less than sixteen. I’ve been used to eighteen.”
 “Sixteen pounds is more than I can afford, but I’ll think it over. Give me your name and address.”
 “Esther Waters, 13 Poplar Road, Dulwich.”
 As Esther turned to go she became aware of the kindness of the eyes that looked at her. Miss Rice said —
 “I’m afraid you’re in trouble .... Sit down; tell me about it.”
 “No, miss, what’s the use?” But Miss Rice looked at her so kindly that Esther could not restrain herself. “There’s nothing for it,” she said, “but to go back to the workhouse.”
 “But why should you go to the workhouse? I offer you fourteen pounds a year and everything found.”
 “You see, miss, I’ve a baby; we’ve been in the workhouse already; I had to go there the night I left my situation, to get him away from Mrs. Spires; she wanted to kill him; she’d have done it for five pounds — that’s the price. But, miss, my story is not one that can be told to a lady such as you.”
 “I think I’m old enough to listen to your story; sit down, and tell it to me.”
 And all the while Miss Rice’s eyes were filled with tenderness and pity.
 “A very sad story — just such a story as happens every day. But you have been punished, you have indeed.”
 “Yes, miss, I think I have; and after all these years of striving it is hard to have to take him back to the workhouse. Not that I want to give out that I was badly treated there, but it is the child I’m thinking of. He was then a little baby and it didn’t matter; we was only there a few months. There’s no one that knows of it but me. But he’s a growing boy now, he’ll remember the workhouse, and it will be always a disgrace.”
 “How old is he?”
 “He was six last May, miss. It has been a hard job to bring him up. I now pay six shillings a week for him, that’s more than fourteen pounds a year, and you can’t do much in the way of clothes on two pounds a year. And now that he’s growing up he’s costing more than ever; but Mrs. Lewis — that’s the woman what has brought him up — is as fond of him as I am myself. She don’t want to make nothing out of his keep, and that’s how I’ve managed up to the present. But I see well enough that it can’t be done; his expense increases, and the wages remains the same. It was my pride to bring him up on my earnings, and my hope to see him an honest man earning good money. But it wasn’t to be, miss, it wasn’t to be. We must be humble and go back to the workhouse.”
 “I can see that it has been a hard fight.”
 “It has indeed, miss; no one will ever know how hard. I shouldn’t mind if it wasn’t going to end by going back to where it started .... They’ll take him from me; I shall never see him while he is there. I wish I was dead, miss, I can’t bear my trouble no longer.”
 “You shan’t go back to the workhouse so long as I can help you. Esther, I’ll give you the wages you ask for. It is more than I can afford. Eighteen pounds a year! But your child shall not be taken from you. You shall not go to the workhouse. There aren’t many such good women in the world as you, Esther.

XXIII
FROM the first Miss Rice was interested in her servant, and encouraged her confidences. But it was some time before either was able to put aside her natural reserve. They were not unlike — quiet, instinctive Englishwomen, strong, warm natures, under an appearance of formality and reserve.
 The instincts of the watch-dog soon began to develop in Esther, and she extended her supervision over all the household expenses, likewise over her mistress’s health.
 “Now, miss, I must ’ave you take your soup while it is ’ot. You’d better put away your writing; you’ve been at it all the morning. You’ll make yourself ill, and then I shall have the nursing of you.” If Miss Rice were going out in the evening she would find herself stopped in the passage. “Now, miss, I really can’t see you go out like that; you’ll catch your death of cold. You must put on your warm cloak.”
 Miss Rice’s friends were principally middle-aged ladies. Her sisters, large, stout women, used to come and see her, and there was a fashionably-dressed young man whom her mistress seemed to like very much. Mr. Alden was his name, and Miss Rice told Esther that he, too, wrote novels; they used to talk about each other’s books for hours, and Esther feared that Miss Rice was giving her heart away to one who did not care for her. But perhaps she was satisfied to see Mr. Alden once a week and talk for an hour with him about books. Esther didn’t think she’d care, if she had a young man, to see him come and go like a shadow. But she hadn’t a young man, and did not want one. All she now wanted was to awake in the morning and know that her child was safe; her ambition was to make her mistress’s life comfortable. And for more than a year she pursued her plan of life unswervingly. She declined an offer of marriage, and was rarely persuaded into a promise to walk out with any of her admirers. One of these was a stationer’s foreman, and almost every day Esther went to the stationer’s for the sermon paper on which her mistress wrote her novels, for blotting-paper, for stamps, to post letters — that shop seemed the centre of their lives.
 Fred Parsons — that was his name — was a meagre little man about thirty-five. A high and prominent forehead rose above a small pointed face, and a scanty growth of blonde beard and moustache did not conceal the receding chin nor the red sealing-wax lips. His faded yellow hair was beginning to grow thin, and his threadbare frock-coat hung limp from sloping shoulders. But these disadvantages were compensated by a clear bell-like voice, into which no trace of doubt ever seemed to come; and his mind was neatly packed with a few religious and political ideas. He had been in business in the West End, but an uncontrollable desire to ask every customer who entered into conversation with him if he were sure that he believed in the second coming of Christ had been the cause of severance between him and his employers.
 He had been at West Kensington a fortnight, had served Esther once with sermon paper, and had already begun to wonder what were her religious beliefs. But bearing in mind his recent dismissal, he refrained for the present. At the end of the week they were alone in the shop. Esther had come for a packet of note-paper. Fred was sorry she had not come for sermon paper; if she had it would have been easier to inquire her opinions regarding the second coming. But the opportunity, such as it was, was not to be resisted. He said —
 “Your mistress seems to use a great deal of paper; it was only a day or two ago that I served you with four quires.”
 “That was for her books; what she now wants is note-paper.”
 “So your mistress writes books!”
 “Yes.”
 “I hope they’re good books — books that are helpful.” He paused to see that no one was within earshot. “Books that bring sinners back to the Lord.”
 “I don’t know what she writes; I only know she writes books; I think I’ve heard she writes novels.”
 Fred did not approve of novels — Esther could see that — and she was sorry; for he seemed a nice, clear-spoken young man, and she would have liked to tell him that her mistress was the last person who would write anything that could do harm to anyone. But her mistress was waiting for her paper, and she took leave of him hastily. The next time they met was in the evening. She was going to see if she could get some fresh eggs for her mistress’s breakfast before the shops closed, and coming towards her, walking at a great pace, she saw one whom she thought she recognised, a meagre little man with long reddish hair curling under the brim of a large soft black hat. He nodded, smiling pleasantly as he passed her.
 “Lor’,” she thought, “I didn’t know him; it’s the stationer’s foreman.” And the very next evening they met in the same street; she was out for a little walk, he was hurrying to catch his train. They stopped to pass the time of day, and three days after they met at the same time, and as nearly as possible at the same place.
 “We’re always meeting,” he said.
 “Yes, isn’t it strange? ... You come this way from business?” she said.
 “Yes; about eight o’clock is my time.”
 It was the end of August; the stars caught fire slowly in the murky London sunset; and, vaguely conscious of a feeling of surprise at the pleasure they took in each other’s company, they wandered round a little bleak square in which a few shrubs had just been planted. They took up the conversation exactly at the point where it had been broken off.
 “I’m sorry,” Fred said, “that the paper isn’t going to be put to better use.”
 “You don’t know my mistress, or you wouldn’t say that.”
 “Perhaps you don’t know that novels are very often stories about the loves of men for other men’s wives. Such books can serve no good purpose.”
 “I’m sure my mistress don’t write about such things. How could she, poor dear innocent lamb? It is easy to see you don’t know her.”
 In the course of their argument it transpired that Miss Rice went to neither church nor chapel.
 Fred was much shocked.
 “I hope,” he said, “you do not follow your mistress’s example.”
 Esther admitted she had for some time past neglected her religion. Fred went so far as to suggest that she ought to leave her present situation and enter a truly religious family.
 “I owe her too much ever to think of leaving her. And it has nothing to do with her if I haven’t thought as much about the Lord as I ought to have. It’s the first place I’ve been in where there was time for religion.”
 This answer seemed to satisfy Fred.
 “Where used you to go?”
 “My people — father and mother — belonged to the Brethren.”
 “To the Close or the Open?”
 “I don’t remember; I was only a little child at the time.”
 “I’m a Plymouth Brother.”
 “Well, that is strange.”
 “Remember that it is only through belief in our Lord, in the sacrifice of the Cross, that we can be saved.”
 “Yes, I believe that.”
 The avowal seemed to have brought them strangely near to each other, and on the following Sunday Fred took Esther to meeting, and introduced her as one who had strayed, but who had never ceased to be one of them.
 She had not been to meeting since she was a little child; and the bare room and bare dogma, in such immediate accordance with her own nature — were they not associated with memories of home, of father and mother, of all that had gone? — touched her with a human delight that seemed to reach to the roots of her nature. It was Fred who preached; and he spoke of the second coming of Christ, when the faithful would be carried away in clouds of glory, of the rapine and carnage to which the world would be delivered up before final absorption in everlasting hell; and a sensation of dreadful awe passed over the listening faces; a young girl who sat with closed eyes put out her hand to assure herself that Esther was still there — that she had not been carried away in glory.
 As they walked home, Esther told Fred that she had not been so happy for a long time. He pressed her hand, and thanked her with a look in which appeared all his soul; she was his for ever and ever; nothing could wholly disassociate them; he had saved her soul. His exaltation moved her to wonder. But her own innate faith, though incapable of these exaltations, had supported her during many a troublous year. Fred would want her to come to meeting with him next Sunday, and she was going to Dulwich. Sooner or later he would find out that she had a child, then she would see him no more. It were better that she should tell him than that he should hear it from others. But she felt she could not bear the humiliation, the shame; and she wished they had never met. That child came between her and every possible happiness .... It were better to break off with Fred. But what excuse could she give? Everything went wrong with her. He might ask her to marry him, then she would have to tell him.
 Towards the end of the week she heard some one tap at the window; it was Fred. He asked her why he had not seen her; she answered that she had not had time.
 “Can you come out this evening?”
 “Yes, if you like.”
 She put on her hat, and they went out. Neither spoke, but their feet took instinctively the pavement that led to the little square where they had walked the first time they went out together.
 “I’ve been thinking of you a good deal, Esther, in the last few days. I want to ask you to marry me.”
 Esther did not answer.
 “Will you?” he said.
 “I can’t; I’m very sorry; don’t ask me.”
 “Why can’t you?”
 “If I told you I don’t think you’d want to marry me. I suppose I’d better tell you. I’m not the good woman you think me. I’ve got a child. There, you have it now, and you can take your hook when you like.”
 It was her blunt, sullen nature that had spoken; she didn’t care if he left her on the spot — now he knew all and could do as he liked. At last, he said —
 “But you’ve repented, Esther?”
 “I should think I had, and been punished too, enough for a dozen children.”
 “Ah, then it wasn’t lately?”
 “Lately! It’s nearly eight year ago.”
 “And all that time you’ve been a good woman?”
 “Yes, I think I’ve been that.”
 “Then if — ”
 “I don’t want no ifs. If I am not good enough for you, you can go elsewhere and get better; I’ve had enough of reproaches.”
 “I did not mean to reproach you; I know that a woman’s path is more difficult to walk in than ours. It may not be a woman’s fault if she falls, but it is always a man’s. He can always fly from temptation.”
 “Yet there isn’t a man that can say he hasn’t gone wrong.”
 “No, not all, Esther.”
 Esther looked him full in the face.
 “I understand what you mean, Esther, but I can honestly say that I never have.”
 Esther did not like him any better for his purity, and was irritated by the clear tones of his icy voice.
 “But that is no reason why I should be hard on those who have not been so fortunate. I didn’t mean to reproach you just now, Esther; I only meant to say that I wish you had told me this before I took you to meeting.”
 “So you’re ashamed of me, is that it? Well, you can keep your shame to yourself.”
 “No, not that, Esther — ”
 “Then you’d like to see me humiliated before the others, as if I haven’t had enough of that already.”
 “No, Esther, listen to me. Those who transgress the moral law may not kneel at the table for a time, until they have repented; but those who believe in the sacrifice of the Cross are acquitted, and I believe you do that.”
 “Yes.”
 “A sinner that repenteth —I will speak about this at our next meeting; you will come with me there?”
 “Next Sunday I’m going to Dulwich to see the child.”
 “Can’t you go after meeting?”
 “No, I can’t be out morning and afternoon both.”
 “May I go with you?”
 “To Dulwich!”
 “You won’t go until after meeting; I can meet you at the railway station.”
 “If you like.”
 As they walked home Esther told Fred the story of her betrayal. He was interested in the story, and was very sorry for her.
 “I love you, Esther; it is easy to forgive those we love.”
 “You’re very good; I never thought to find a man so good.” She looked up in his face; her hand was on the gate, and in that moment she felt that she almost loved him.

XXIV
 MRS. HUMPHRIES, an elderly person, who looked after a bachelor’s establishment two doors up, and generally slipped in about tea-time, soon began to speak of Fred as a very nice young man who would be likely to make a woman happy. But Esther moved about the kitchen in her taciturn way, hardly answering. Suddenly she told Mrs. Humphries that she had been to Dulwich with him, and that it was wonderful how he and Jackie had taken to one another.
 “You don’t say so! Well, it is nice to find them religious folks less ’ard-’earted than they gets the name of.”
 Mrs. Humphries was of the opinion that henceforth Esther should give herself out as Jackie’s aunt. “None believes them stories, but they make one seem more respectable like, and I am sure Mr. Parsons will appreciate the intention.” Esther did not answer, but she thought of what Mrs. Humphries had said. Perhaps it would be better if Jackie were to leave off calling her Mummie. Auntie! But no, she could not bear it. Fred must take her as she was or not at all. They seemed to understand each other; he was earning good money, thirty shillings a week, and she was now going on for eight-and-twenty; if she was ever going to be married it was time to think about it.
 “I don’t know how that dear soul will get on without me,” she said one October morning as they jogged out of London by a slow train from St. Paul’s. Fred was taking her into Kent to see his people.
“How do you expect me to get on without you?”
 Esther laughed.
 “Trust you to manage somehow. There ain’t much fear of a man not looking after his little self.”
 “But the old folk will want to know when. What shall I tell them?”
 “This time next year; that’ll be soon enough. Perhaps you’ll get tired of me before then.”
 “Say next spring, Esther.”
 The train stopped.
 “There’s father waiting for us in the spring-cart. Father! He don’t hear us. He’s gone a bit deaf of late years. Father!”
 “Ah, so here you are. Train late.”
 “This is Esther, father.”
 They were going to spend the day at the farm-house, and she was going to be introduced to Fred’s sisters and to his brother. But these did not concern her much, her thoughts were set on Mrs. Parsons, for Fred had spoken a great deal about his mother. When she had been told about Jackie she was of course very sorry; but when she had heard the whole of Esther’s story she had said, “We are all born into temptation, and if your Esther has really repented and prayed to be forgiven, we must not say no to her.” Nevertheless Esther was not quite easy in her mind, and half regretted that she had consented to see Fred’s people until he had made her his wife. But it was too late to think of such things. There was the farm-house. Fred had just pointed it out, and scenting his stable, the old grey ascended the hill at a trot, and Esther wondered what the farm-house would be like. All the summer they had had a fine show of flowers, Fred said. Now only a few Michaelmas daisies withered in the garden, and the Virginia creeper covered one side of the house with a crimson mantle. The old man said he would take the trap round to the stable, and Fred walked up the red-bricked pavement and lifted the latch. As they passed through the kitchen Fred introduced Esther to his two sisters, Mary and Lily. But they were busy cooking.
 “Mother is in the parlour,” said Mary; “she is waiting for you.” By the window, in a wide wooden arm-chair, sat a large woman about sixty, dressed in black. She wore on either side of her long white face two corkscrew curls, which gave her a somewhat ridiculous appearance. But she ceased to be ridiculous or grotesque when she rose from her chair to greet her son. Her face beamed, and she held out her hands in a beautiful gesture of welcome.
 “Oh, how do you do, dear Fred? I am that glad to see you! How good of you to come all this way! Come and sit down here.”
 “Mother, this is Esther.”
 “How do you do, Esther? It was good of you to come. I am glad to see you. Let me get you a chair. Take off your things, dear; come and sit down.” She insisted on relieving Esther of her hat and jacket, and, having laid them on the sofa, she waddled across the room, drawing over two chairs.
 “Come and sit down; you’ll tell me everything. I can’t get about much now, but I like to have my children round me. Take this chair, Esther.” Then turning to Fred, “Tell me, Fred, how you’ve been getting on. Are you still living at Hackney?”
 “Yes, mother; but when we’re married we’re going to have a cottage at Mortlake. Esther will like it better than Hackney. It is nearer the country.”
 “Then you’ve not forgotten the country. Mortlake is on the river, I think. I hope you won’t find it too damp.”
“No, mother, there are some nice cottages there. I think we shall find that Mortlake suits us. There are many friends there; more than fifty meet together every Sunday. And there’s a lot of political work to be done there. I know that you’re against politics, but men can’t stand aside nowadays. Times change, mother.”
 “So long as we have God in our hearts, my dear boy, all that we do is well. But you must want something after your journey. Fred, dear, knock at that door. Your sister Clara’s dressing there. Tell her to make haste.”
 “All right, mother,” cried a voice from behind the partition which separated the rooms, and a moment after the door opened and a young woman about thirty entered. She was better-looking than the other sisters, and the fashion of her skirt, and the worldly manner with which she kissed her brother and gave her hand to Esther, marked her off at once from the rest of the family. She was forewoman in a large millinery establishment. She spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday at the farm, but to-day she had got away earlier, and with the view to impressing Esther, she explained how this had come about.
 Mrs. Parsons suggested a glass of currant wine, and Lily came in with a tray and glasses. Clara said she was starving. Mary said she would have to wait, and Lily whispered, “In about half-an-hour.”
 After dinner the old man said that they must be getting on with their work in the orchard. Esther said she would be glad to help, but as she was about to follow the others Mrs. Parsons detained her.
 “You don’t mind staying with me a few minutes, do you, dear? I shan’t keep you long.” She drew over a chair for Esther. “I shan’t perhaps see you again for some time. I am getting an old woman, and the Lord may be pleased to take me at any moment. I wanted to tell you, dear, that I put my trust in you. You will make a good wife to Fred, I feel sure, and he will make a good father to your child, and if God blesses you with other children he’ll treat your first no different than the others. He’s told me so, and my Fred is a man of his word. You were led into sin, but you’ve repented. We was all born into temptation, and we must trust to the Lord to lead us out lest we should dash our foot against a stone.”
 “I was to blame; I don’t say I wasn’t, but —”
 “We won’t say no more about that. We’re all sinners, the best of us. You’re going to be my son’s wife; you’re therefore my daughter, and this house is your home whenever you please to come to see us. And I hope that that will be often. I like to have my children about me. I can’t get about much now, so they must come to me. It is very sad not to be able to go to meeting. I’ve not been to meeting since Christmas, but I can see them going there from the kitchen window, and how ’appy they look coming back from prayer. It is easy to see that they have been with God. The Salvationists come this way sometimes. They stopped in the lane to sing. I could not hear the words, but I could see by their faces that they was with God ... Now, I’ve told you all that was on my mind. I must not keep you; Fred is waiting.”
 Esther kissed the old woman, and went into the orchard, where she found Fred on a ladder shaking the branches. He came down when he saw Esther, and Harry, his brother, took his place. Esther and Fred filled one basket, then, yielding to a mutual inclination, they wandered about the orchard, stopping on the little plank bridge. They hardly spoke at all, words seemed unnecessary; each felt happiness to be in the other’s presence. They heard the water trickling through the weeds, and as the light waned the sound of the falling apples grew more distinct. Then a breeze shivered among the tops of the apple-trees, and the sered leaves were blown from the branches. The voices of the gatherers were heard crying that their baskets were full. They crossed the plank bridge, joking the lovers, who stood aside to let them pass.
 When they entered the house they saw the old farmer, who had slipped in before them, sitting by his wife holding her hand, patting it in a curious old-time way, and the attitude of the old couple was so pregnant with significance that it fixed itself on Esther’s mind. It seemed to her that she had never seen anything so beautiful. So they had lived for forty years, faithful to each other, and she wondered if Fred forty years hence would be sitting by her side holding her hand.
 The old man lighted a lantern and went round to the stable to get a trap out. Driving through the dark country, seeing village lights shining out of the distant solitudes, was a thrilling adventure. A peasant came like a ghost out of the darkness; he stepped aside and called, “Good-night!” which the old farmer answered somewhat gruffly, while Fred answered in a ringing, cheery tone. Never had Esther spent so long and happy a day. Everything had combined to produce a strange exaltation of the spirit in her; and she listened to Fred more tenderly than she had done before.
 The train rattled on through suburbs beginning far away in the country; rattled on through suburbs that thickened at every mile; rattled on through a brick entanglement; rattled over iron bridges, passed over deep streets, over endless lines of lights.
 He bade her good-bye at the area gate, and she had promised him that they should be married in the spring. He had gone away with a light heart. And she had run upstairs to tell her dear mistress of the happy day which her kindness had allowed her to spend in the country. And Miss Rice had laid the book she was reading on her knees, and had listened to Esther’s pleasures as if they had been her own.