no good; he won’t come ‘ome; he’s always got fellers an’ girls to go round with.  He took his hoath as he’d come back to-night, an’ then it come into my ’ed as I’d put my best things on, just to—­you know what I mean, Miss Snowdon.  But he won’t come before twelve o’clock; I know he won’t.  An’ I get that low sittin’ ’ere, you can’t think I can’t go nowhere, because o’ the children.  If it wasn’t for them I could go to work again, an’ I’d be that glad; I feel as if my ’ed would drop off sometimes!  I ham so glad you just come in!’

Jane had tried so many forms of encouragement, of consolation, on previous occasions that she knew not how to repeat herself.  She was ashamed to speak words which sounded so hollow and profitless.  This silence was only too significant to Pennyloaf, and in a moment she exclaimed with querulous energy: 

‘I know what’ll be the bend of it!  I’ll go an’ do like mother does—­I will!  I will!  I’ll put my ring away, an’ I’ll go an’ sit all night in the public-’ouse!  It’s what all the others does, an’ I’ll do the same.  I often feel I’m a fool to go on like this.  I don’t know what I live for, P’r’aps he’ll be sorry when I get run in like mother.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Pennyloaf!’ cried Jane, stamping her foot, (It was odd how completely difference of character had reversed their natural relations to each other; Pennyloaf was the child, Jane the mature woman.) ’You know better, and you’ve no right to give way to such thoughts.  I was going to say I’d come and be with you all Saturday afternoon, but I don’t know whether I shall now.  And I’d been thinking you might like to come and see me on Sunday, but I can’t have people that go to the public-house, so we won’t say anything more about it.  I shall have to be off; good-bye!’

She stepped to the door.

‘Miss Snowdon!’

Jane turned, and after an instant of mock severity, broke into a laugh which seemed to fill the wretched den with sunlight.  Words, too, she found; words of soothing influence such as leap from the heart to the tongue in spite of the heavy thoughts that try to check them.  Pennyloaf was learning to depend upon these words for strength in her desolation.  They did not excite her to much hopefulness, but there was a sustaining power in their sweet sincerity which made all the difference between despair tending to evil and the sigh of renewed effort.  ‘I don’t care,’ Pennyloaf had got into the habit of thinking, after her friend’s departure, ’I won’t give up as long as she looks in now and then.’

Out from the swarm of babies Jane hurried homewards.  She had a reason for wishing to be back in good time to-night; it was Wednesday, and on Wednesday evening there was wont to come a visitor, who sat for a couple of hours in her grandfather’s room and talked, talked—­the most interesting talk Jane had ever heard or could imagine.  A latch-key admitted her; she ran up to the second floor.  A voice from the front-room caught her ear; certainly not his voice—­it was too early—­but that of some unusual visitor.  She was on the point of entering her own chamber, when the other door opened, and somebody exclaimed, ‘Ah, here she is!’