Mr. Hobbs looked hopelessly at his pipe.  He did not recollect where to put it.  Nellie, understanding, took it from his fingers and pushed him gently by the arm towards his wife.  He knelt down by the weeping woman’s side and put his hands on the head that was bent to the ground.  “Sue,” he said, huskily, not knowing what to say.  “Don’t take on so!  It’s better for ’im.”

“It’s not better,” she cried in answer, kneeling up and frantically throwing her arms across the bed.  “How can it be better?  Oh, God!  I wish I was dead.  Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!”

“Don’t, Sue!” begged Mr. Hobbs, weeping in a clumsy way, as men usually do.

“It’s not right,” cried the mother, rolling her head, half-crazed.  “It’s not right, Jack.  It’s not right.  It didn’t ought to have died.  It didn’t ought to have died, Jack.  It wouldn’t if it had a chance, but it hadn’t a chance.  It didn’t have a chance, Jack.  It didn’t have a chance.”

“Don’t, Sue!” begged Mr. Hobbs again.  “You did what you could.”

“I didn’t,” she moaned.  “I didn’t.  I didn’t do what I could.  There were lots of things I might have done that I didn’t.  I wasn’t as kind as I might have been.  I was cross to it and hasty.  Oh, my God, my God!  Why couldn’t I have died instead?  Why couldn’t I?  Why don’t we all die?  It’s not right.  It’s not right.  Oh, my God, my God!”

And she thought God, whatever that is, did not hear and would not answer, she not knowing that in her own pain and anguish were the seeds of progression and in her cries the whetting of the sickle wherewith all wrongs are cut down when they are ripe for the reaper.  So she wept and lamented, bewailing her dead, rebellious and self-reproachful.

“Take the baby, dear?” quoth Mrs. Macanany, reappearing from a descent to the kitchen with a six months’ infant squalling in her arms.  “Give it a drink now!  It’ll make you feel better.”

Poor Mrs. Hobbs clutched the baby-in-arms convulsively and sobbed over it, finding some comfort in the exertion.  To Mrs. Macanany’s muttered wrath Nellie intervened, however, with warnings of “fits” as likely to follow the nursing of the child while its mother was so excited and feverish.  Mr. Hobbs loyally seconded Nellie’s amendment and with unexpected shrewdness urged the mother to control her grief for the dead for the sake of the living.  Which succeeding, to some extent, they got the poor woman downstairs and comforted her with a cup of tea, Nellie undressing and soothing the crying children, who sobbed because of this vague happening which the eldest child of 11 explained as meaning that “Teddy’s going to be put in the deep hole.”

It was after 10 when Nellie went.  Mrs. Hobbs cried again as Nellie kissed her “good-night.”  Mr. Hobbs shook hands with genuine friendship.  “I don’t know whatever we’d have done without you, Miss Lawton,” he said, bashfully, following her to the door.

“I don’t know what they’ll do without you, Mr. Hobbs,” retorted Nellie, whose quick tongue was noted in the neighbourhood.