I spent some sleepless nights in reconciling myself to all this, and perhaps wept a little, too, at the thought that after years of separation I might be a stranger to my own darling.  But at length I put my faith in “the call of the blood” to tell her she was mine, and then nothing remained except to select the institution to which my only love and treasure was to be assigned.

Accident helped me in this as in other things.  One day on my westward journey a woman who sat beside me in the tram, and was constantly wiping her eyes (though I could see a sort of sunshine through her tears), could not help telling me, out of the overflowing of her poor heart, what had just been happening to her.

She was a widow, and had been leaving her little girl, three years old, at an orphanage, and though it had been hard to part with her, and the little darling had looked so pitiful when she came away, it would be the best for both of them in the long run.

I asked which orphanage it was, and she mentioned the name of it, telling me something about the founder—­a good doctor who had been a father to the fatherless of thousands of poor women like herself.

That brought me to a quick decision, and the very next morning, putting on my hat and coat, I set off for the Home, which I knew where to find, having walked round it on my way back from the West End and heard the merry voices of happy children who were playing behind a high wall.

I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the mood in which I entered the orphanage.  In spite of all that life had done to me, I really and truly felt as if I were about to confer an immense favour upon the doctor by allowing him to take care of my little woman.

Oh, how well I remember that little point of time!

My first disappointment was to learn that the good doctor was dead, and when I was shown into the office of his successor (everything bore such a businesslike air) I found an elderly man with a long “three-decker” neck and a glacial smile, who, pushing his spectacles up on to his forehead, said in a freezing voice: 

“Well, ma’am, what is your pleasure?”

After a moment of giddiness I began to tell him my story—­how I had a child and her nurse was not taking proper care of her; how I was in uncongenial employment myself, but hoped soon to get better; how I loved my little one and expected to be able to provide for her presently; and how, therefore, if he would receive her for a while, only a little while, on the understanding, the clear and definite understanding, that I could take her away as soon as I wished to. . . .

Oh dear!  Oh dear: 

I do not know what there was in my appearance or speech which betrayed me, but I had got no further than this when the old gentleman said sharply: 

“Can you provide a copy of the register of your child’s birth to show that it is legitimate?”