, that'll want yer so. Mother! Mother!"

"Don' I kape on a-tellin' of yer I ain't a-goin'."

There was no time to sob for long on the mother's pillow. Dora was due
at school. She wiped her crimsoned cheeks upon the corner of the sheet,
stood up and put her sunburnt sailor-hat upon the carefully curled
hair. She was neatly dressed in a brown woollen frock nearly covered by
a white, lace-trimmed overall; she wore brown stockings and brown
shoes. The mother watched her to the door with yearning eyes.

"My pretty gal!" she said.

The neighbour who waited on her in moments spared from her own
household labours came in. She held a cup of paste made from cornflour
in her hand, and stirred the mixture invitingly.

"It's time yu had suffin' inside of yer, Mis' Green," she said. "Yu
ha'n't tasted wittels since that mossel o' bread-an'-butter yu fancied
las' night."

She put a spoonful of the food, stirred over a smoky fire, to the
parched lips.

"I'd suner, a sight, have a drink o' water," the sick woman said.
"There ain't nothin' I fare ter crave 'cept water now."

"There ain't no nouragement in water, Mis' Green. Take this here,
instids," the neighbour said firmly.

Two spoonfuls were swallowed with difficulty.

"Come! Tha's as ter should be! That comfort ye, Mis' Green, bor?"

The faint eyes looked solemnly in the healthy, stolid face above her.
"There's nothin' don't comfort me, Mis' Barrett."

"An' why's the raisen?" the neighbour reprovingly demanded. "Because
yu're a-dyin', Mis' Green, and yu don't give yer mind tu it. I ha' been
by other deathbeds--the Lord reward me for it, as 'tis ter be expected
He will--and I ha'n't never seed a Christian woman so sot agin goin' as
yu are."

The reluctant one shut her eyes wearily; the dropped lids trembled for
a minute, then were raised upon the same hard face.

"She don' look like a labourer's gal, Dora don't," she said faintly.
"She ha'n't got th' mander o' them sort o' truck."

"What then, Mis' Green?" the neighbour inquired, stern with the
consciousness of her own large family of "truck." The supposed
superiority of Dora of the ringolets hurt her maternal pride and raised
a storm of righteous anger in her breast.

Mrs Green did not explain; the discoloured lids fell again waveringly
over the dim eyes, the upper lip was drawn back showing the gums above
the teeth.

It was the mere skeleton of a woman who lay there. She had suffered
long and intensely; no one