dressed in hideous garb, conducted her across a courtyard to a
bare-looking office, where she was asked to sit down. After a few
minutes the matron appeared, accompanied by a stoutly built woman, who
called herself the labor matron, and into whose care Grannie was
immediately given. She was taken away to the bath-room first of all.
There her own neat, pretty clothes were taken from her, and she was
given the workhouse print dress, the ugly apron, the hideous cap, and
the little three-cornered shawl to wear.

"What's your age?" asked the matron.

"Sixty-eight, ma'am," replied Grannie.

"Let me see; surely there is something wrong with that hand."

"Yes, ma'am," replied Grannie solemnly; "it is the hand that has
brought me here. I was good at needlework in my day, ma'am, but 'twas
writing as did it."

"Writing! did you write much?" asked the matron.

"No, ma'am, only twice a year at the most, but even them two letters
cost me sore; they brought on a disease in the hand; it is called
writers' cramp. It is an awful complaint, and it has brought me here,
ma'am."

The labor matron looked very hard at Grannie. She did not understand
her words, nor the expression on her brave face. Grannie by no means
wore the helpless air which characterizes most old women when they come
to the workhouse.

"Well," she said, after a pause, "hurry with your bath; you needn't
have another for a fortnight; but once a fortnight you must wash here.
At your age, and with your hand so bad, you won't be expected to do any
manual work at all."

"I'd rayther, ef you please, ma'am," said Grannie. "I'm not accustomed
to settin' idle."

"Well, I don't see that you can do anything; that hand is quite past
all use, but perhaps the doctor will take a look at it to-morrow. Now
get through that bath, and I'll take you to the room where the other
old women are."

"Good Lord, keep me from thinkin' o' the past," said Grannie when the
door closed behind her.

She got through the bath and put on her workhouse dress, and felt, with
a chill all through her little frame, that she had passed suddenly from
life to death. The matron came presently to fetch her.

"This way, please," she said, in a tart voice. She had treated Grannie
with just a shadow of respect as long as she wore her own nice and
dainty clothes, but now that she was in the workhouse garb, she looked
like any other bowed down little woman. She belonged, in short, to the
failur