now-a-days, and they won't be bothered with weakly ones.'

CHAPTER IV.

A RESOLVE.

However, as it turned out, there was to be no shop for Mary Anne the
next day or for many a day to come. When John Douglas called in the
morning, he was informed that she was 'delirious-like.' She was
imploring the doctor--who had been there an hour before--not to let her
lose her situation. She was talking about her mother and sisters in an
incoherent way; also about one Pete, who appeared to have gone away to
Australia and never written since. Douglas looked at the girl, lying
there with her flushed face, closed eyes, and troubled breathing,
unconscious of his presence, only twisting the bed-clothes about with
her hot hands.

'Poor Mary Ann,' the landlady said contemplatively. 'If she dies,
she'll 'ave to be buried by the work'us. And if she lives, she'll be
worse off than ever; for they won't take a girl with cropped hair into
a shop, and the fear of infection besides. She ain't got a friend in
the world, she ain't; except her own people, and they're only a drain
on the poor thing. Poor Mary Ann! she have had a bad time of it.
Perhaps it would be kinder in Providence if He took her; for who's to
pay for her keep if she gets through the fever? Not that I would ask
to be paid for her lodging; I ain't one like that; there's her room,
and welcome; that's what I says to my husband when he come home last
night; and neither him nor me's afraid of fever, nor would turn out a
poor thing as have been took. But law! it would be months afore she'd
get another place; and she ain't got nobody to look after her.'

'What have you done with the money I gave you last night?' he asked.

'There it lies, sir--on the mantel-shelf. It ain't for me to touch; it
is for the doctor to give his orders about that money.'

'Just put this eighteenpence to it, mistress, and ask the doctor what
the poor lass may want. It is all I happen to have with me the now.'

Then he left; and walked away with an unusual air of determination He
was not downcast because he had parted with his last sixpence.

'It is even better thus,' this stern-faced man was saying to himself,
'for now we must face facts, and get rid of speculation. Let us begin
at the beginning--with one's ten fingers! Poor lass! It is a dreadful
place, a great city like this; it has no compassion. Surely, in the
country, she would not be so utterly thrown down in the race. Surely