at night at work on some small frocks
and pinafores, and he thought that at last the subject was coming to
the surface, and especially as she coloured up and tried to hide the
work when he came in.

'Busy?' he said. 'You seem very hard at work. Who are you working
for?'

'A baby,' she stammered, 'a baby----that my sister's taking care of.'

She was so red and confused that he felt sure she was saying what was
not true, but he forgave her for the sake of the baby for whom he
firmly believed the work was being done, and who, to be sure, when he
saw it in Mrs Gray's arms, looked badly in want of clothes more fitted
to its size than Bill's old pinafores.

He stood for a minute fingering the pink, spotted print of infantile
simplicity of pattern, and listening to the quick click, click, of her
needle as it flew in and out; but it was not till he had turned away
and was half out of the kitchen, that she began a request that had been
on the tip of her tongue all the time, but which she had not ventured
to bring out while he stood at the table.

'I was going to ask--if you 'd no objection--seeing that they're no
good to any one'----

Now it was coming out, and he turned with an encouraging smile:

'Well, what is it?'

'There are some old baby-clothes put away in a drawer up-stairs. They
're rough dried, and I've kept an eye on them, and took them out now
and then to see as the moth didn't get in them'----

'Yes?'

'Well, sir--this baby that I'm working for is terrible short of
clothes, and I thought I might take a few of them for her'----

She did not look at him once as she spoke, or she might have been
encouraged by the look on his face, which softened into a very
benignant, kindly expression.

'To be sure! to be sure!' he said. 'I 've no objection to your taking
some of them for the baby--at your sister's.' He spoke the last words
with some meaning, and she looked quickly up at him and dropped her
work as if tumultuous words were pressing to be spoken, but stopped
them with an effort and went on with her work, only with heightened
colour and trembling fingers.

She was not slow to avail herself of his permission, for that very
night, before she went to bed, he heard her in the next room turning
out the drawer where the old baby-clothes had been stored away ever
since little Edith had discarded them for clothes of a larger size.
And next morning she was up betimes, starching and ironing and
goffering da