an's heritage, surely the happy
years should come to every man--not doled out, not meanly dependent on
his moral orthodoxy, but as his right. The fat philanthropist is a
debtor, but he behaves like a creditor; he distributes obligations with
his gold, yet he has no right to the gold he gives. He makes his brother
beg upon his knees for the life and the health and the dear opportunity
that should have been that brother's birthright."

"You are possessed, dear Sarah Brown," said the witch. "Don't be
frightened, it will soon pass off. I knew a girl who had an attack very
much like this; while she was under its influence she made up a psalm
pretty nearly as good as one of David's. Her mother was much alarmed
about her. But she recovered quite quickly, except that she left her job
as typist in a mind-improving institute and went to sea as a
stewardess."

Sarah Brown talked on, louder and louder. "Too long I have been a
servant in the house of this stranger, this greedy Charity; too long
have I sat--a silly proxy for the Too-Fortunate--in this narrow
stiff-backed judgement-seat from ten till three daily. There is Love and
April outside the window, there is too much wind and laughter outside to
allow of the forming of Habits. I have seen Love and the Spring only
through the glass of a charity office window, the rude voices of
children and sparrows and other inheritors of opportunity have been
dulled for me by grey panes. The white ships ... Castle-of-Comfort ...
Cloud-i'-the-Sun have sailed into port from the open sky without a cargo
for me...."

"Good God!" said Sarah Brown, pushing David from her. "What has happened
to me? I have become sentimental."

The room seemed to her wild imagination to be full of the spirits of
parsons and social workers with flaming swords, pointing at the door.

"Well, that's the end of that job," said the witch. "I'll tell you what,
let's go and sit on the Swing-leg Seat on the Heath. The air there and
the look of Harrow church steeple'll do you good."

"I am damned. I am a Cautionary Case," cried Sarah Brown, and she slunk
behind the witch through the frowning gate of her Eden of fair inks and
smooth white surfaces. She had shared with David the remains of her
Sandwich of Knowledge; she had left on the table her puny paper
defiance. David, except that he had required but little temptation, had
played Adam's part very creditably in the affair. For him Eden had been
a soft warm place, and he