The two friends were walking together, pushing before them a small cart in which, on the top of the bundles of household goods, a wretched woman and her newborn child were lying, covered under a scanty tarpauling from the driving sleet.  The mud splashed beneath their feet; Susannah had little breath or strength for speech.  Elvira, more slightly made, in every way more fragile, had seemed to develop, with every new phase of suffering, more strength of muscle and hatred and love.

They passed now two of the leaders.  It was the custom for a certain number of these men to go forward and station themselves in pairs at intervals upon the road, cheering each group as it passed them, noting with careful eyes if any ill could be remedied by change of posture or exchange of burdens.  One of them now, seeing the work to which Susannah had set herself, interfered.  He was about sixty years of age, coarse in appearance, an elder whose wife and family Susannah knew by reputation.  He and his fellows called a halt, looking for some man who might push the cart, but there was none within sight who was not already overburdened, nor was there a waggon that was not already overfilled with the sick and exhausted.  The elder, whose name happened to be Darling, found in this particular instance reason to swerve from his position of guard.  He left the post in charge of his fellow and pushed the cart.  It was a habit with many of these leaders to seek to lighten the way by jocularities, and Susannah had before observed that, whether the jests arose with ease or effort from the heavy hearts of those who made them, a large proportion of the people were evidently cheered thereby.  She could put aside her own tastes for the public good; she could even excuse when this rough comfort was offered to herself.  Darling, labouring behind the cart, made light of the service he rendered.

He said first that the newborn babe must be called after him, and when he learned its sex he gave permission to the ladies to decide between them which should share this honour.

“Shall it be ’darling Susannah’?” he asked, making gentle his tone as he addressed the stately widow, “or shall it be ’Elvira darling’?” This time he turned his head with a broader smile toward Elvira’s sharp little features.

Susannah felt that her hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man’s broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution.  The face would have been fat had it not been half-starved.  It was pale now under the ill-kempt hair, and the set purpose of helpfulness was stamped upon it.  She took back the word “leer” out of mere respect.  Darling had given away his shoes; he was walking barefoot; he had given away coat and vest also, and the rotund lines of his figure were unpleasantly obvious under the wet shirt, and yet Susannah knew and bowed to the fact that some sick man or little child was wrapped in the garments that were gone.