ed
tablecloth, were put on the beds at night, they did not compensate for
the blankets, and they were often unable to sleep on account of the
intense cold.

A lady district visitor who called occasionally sometimes gave Mary an
order for a hundredweight of coal or a shillingsworth of groceries, or
a ticket for a quart of soup, which Elsie fetched in the evening from
the Soup Kitchen. But this was not very often, because, as the lady
said, there were so many cases similar to theirs that it was impossible
to do more than a very little for any one of them.

Sometimes Mary became so weak and exhausted through overwork, worry,
and lack of proper food that she broke down altogether for the time
being, and positively could not do any work at all. Then she used to
lie down on the bed in her room and cry.

Whenever she became like this, Elsie and Charley used to do the
housework when they came home from school, and make tea and toast for
her, and bring it to the bedside on a chair so that she could eat lying
down. When there was no margarine or dripping to put on the toast,
they made it very thin and crisp and pretended it was biscuit.

The children rather enjoyed these times; the quiet and leisure was so
different from other days when their mother was so busy she had no time
to speak to them.

They would sit on the side of the bed, the old grandmother in her chair
opposite with the cat beside her listening to the conversation and
purring or mewing whenever they stroked it or spoke to it. They talked
principally of the future. Elsie said she was going to be a teacher
and earn a lot of money to bring home to her mother to buy things with.
Charley was thinking of opening a grocer's shop and having a horse and
cart. When one has a grocer's shop, there is always plenty to eat;
even if you have no money, you can take as much as you like out of your
shop--good stuff, too, tins of salmon, jam, sardines, eggs, cakes,
biscuits and all those sorts of things--and one was almost certain to
have some money every day, because it wasn't likely that a whole day
would go by without someone or other coming into the shop to buy
something. When delivering the groceries with the horse and cart, he
would give rides to all the boys he knew, and in the summertime, after
the work was done and the shop shut up, Mother and Elsie and Granny
could also come for long rides into the country.

The old grandmother--who had latterly become quite ch