come. Don't linger in
the cold.'

She drew the poor sobbing thing gently up-stairs, and persuaded her to
get into the warm bed. But it was long before Janet could lie down. She
sat leaning her head on her knees, convulsed by sobs, while the motherly
woman covered her with clothes and held her arms round her to comfort her
with warmth. At last the hysterical passion had exhausted itself, and she
fell back on the pillow; but her throat was still agitated by piteous
after-sobs, such as shake a little child even when it has found a refuge
from its alarms on its mother's lap.

Now Janet was getting quieter, Mrs. Pettifer determined to go down and
make a cup of tea, the first thing a kind old woman thinks of as a solace
and restorative under all calamities. Happily there was no danger of
awaking her servant, a heavy girl of sixteen, who was snoring blissfully
in the attic, and might be kept ignorant of the way in which Mrs.
Dempster had come in. So Mrs. Pettifer busied herself with rousing the
kitchen fire, which was kept in under a huge 'raker'--a possibility by
which the coal of the midland counties atones for all its slowness and
white ashes.

When she carried up the tea, Janet was lying quite still; the spasmodic
agitation had ceased, and she seemed lost in thought; her eyes were fixed
vacantly on the rushlight shade, and all the lines of sorrow were
deepened in her face.

'Now, my dear,' said Mrs. Pettifer, 'let me persuade you to drink a cup
of tea; you'll find it warm you and soothe you very much. Why, dear
heart, your feet are like ice still. Now, do drink this tea, and I'll
wrap 'em up in flannel, and then they'll get warm.'

Janet turned her dark eyes on her old friend and stretched out her arms.
She was too much oppressed to say anything; her suffering lay like a
heavy weight on her power of speech; but she wanted to kiss the good kind
woman. Mrs. Pettifer, setting down the cup, bent towards the sad
beautiful face, and Janet kissed her with earnest sacramental
kisses--such kisses as seal a new and closer bond between the helper
and the helped.

She drank the tea obediently. 'It _does_ warm me,' she said. 'But now you
will get into bed. I shall lie still now.'

Mrs. Pettifer felt it was the best thing she could do to lie down quietly
and say no more. She hoped Janet might go to sleep. As for herself, with
that tendency to wakefulness common to advanced years, she found it
impossible to compose herself to sl