aimlessly about the streets, and, the inevitable consequence, of seeking warmth and company in the public-house.  Her children lived as the children of such mothers do:  they played on the stairs or on the pavements, had accidents, were always dirty, cried themselves to sleep in hunger and pain.  When Emma returned, still only fit for a convalescent home, she had to walk about day after day in search of work, conciliating the employers whom Mrs. Clay had neglected or disgusted, undertaking jobs to which her strength was inadequate, and, not least, striving her hardest to restore order in the wretched home.  It was agreed that Kate should use the machine at home, whilst Emma got regular employment in a workroom.

Emma never heard of that letter which her sister wrote to Mutimer’s wife.  Kate had no expectation that help would come of it; she hoped that it had done Mutimer harm, and the hope had to satisfy her.  She durst not let Emma suspect that she had done such a thing.

Emma heard, however, of the loan from Daniel Dabbs, and afterwards thanked him for his kindness, but she resolutely set her face against the repetition of such favours, though Daniel would have willingly helped when she came out of the hospital.  Kate, of course, was for accepting anything that was offered; she lost her temper, and accused Emma of wishing to starve the children.  But she was still greatly under her sister’s influence, and when Emma declared that there must be a parting between them if she discovered that anything was secretly accepted from Mr. Dabbs, Kate sullenly yielded the point.

Daniel was aware of all this, and it made an impression upon him.

To-night Emma was as usual left alone with the children.  After tea, when Kate left the house, she sat down to the machine and worked for a couple of hours; for her there was small difference between Sunday and week day.  Whilst working she told the children stories; it was a way of beguiling them from their desire to go and play in the street.  They were strange stories, half recollected from a childhood which, had promised better things than a maidenhood of garret misery, half Emma’s own invention.  They had a grace, a spontaneity, occasionally an imaginative brightness, which would have made them, if they had been taken down from the lips, models of tale-telling for children.  Emma had two classes of story:  the one concerned itself with rich children, the, other with poor; the one highly fanciful, the other full of a touching actuality, the very essence of a life such as that led by the listeners themselves.  Unlike the novel which commends itself to the world’s grown children, these narratives had by no means necessarily a happy ending; for one thing Emma saw too deeply into the facts of life, and was herself too sad, to cease her music on a merry chord; and, moreover, it was half a matter of principle with her to make the little ones thoughtful and sympathetic; she believed