Lydia covered her face and wept.  Mary, drawing nearer, went on with broken voice: 

’I’ve been very much to blame, Lydia.  I’ve been hard and unforgiving.  But that night when you told me you hated me, I wanted to say how sorry I was for you.  I never spoke a word against Thyrza, not a word.  And now I couldn’t help coming to you.  I want to be friends again, Lyddy dear.  Don’t send me away!  I’ve been to blame in everything; I’ve been bad-hearted.  You might well not believe my religion when you saw me acting as I did.’

She ceased, drawn to Lydia’s heart and kissed with more than the old affection.

’I know what you did for him, Mary.  He told me—­the last words he spoke.  He asked me to be friends with you again.  I do want a friend, Mary; I’m very lonely.  I’ll love you as long as I live for being kind to him.’

They lit no light, but sat together by the glow of the fire, speaking in very low voices, often with long intervals of silence.  Two poor girls, the one as ignorant as the other, but speaking with awed spirit of death and the hope that is thereafter.

CHAPTER XXXII

TOTTY’S LUCK

‘The Little Shop with the Large Heart’ had suffered a grave loss:  Miss Totty Nancarrow had withdrawn her custom from it.

Totty had patronised Mrs. Bower very steadily for some five years.  It was true that the large-hearted shop put a rather large price on certain things, in comparison with what they could be bought for in Lambeth.  If you wanted a pot of marmalade, for instance, Mrs. Bower sold it for sixpence, whereas it was notoriously purchasable for fivepence-halfpenny at grocers in Lambeth Walk.  If you went for a quarter of a pound of butter, you had no choice of quality, and paid fourpence three farthings, whilst in Lambeth Walk you obtained a better article for the even fourpence.  Totty, however, had a principle that one ought to deal rather with acquaintances than with strangers, and another principle that it was better to pay a halfpenny more for an article to be had by crossing the street than a halfpenny less and go a whole street’s length for it.  True girl of the people was Totty, herein as in other respects.  It was a simple fact that Mrs. Bower’s business depended on the indolence and indifference to small economies of those women who lived in her immediate neighbourhood.  It is the same kind of thing that leads working people to pay for having meat badly cooked at the baker’s instead of cooking it cheaply and well themselves; that leads them to buy expensive, ready-prepared suppers at the pork butcher’s and the fried-fish shop, instead of tossing up an equally good and very cheap supper for themselves.