Beyond the misfortune of her blindness she had no defect,
and her mind was alert and cheerful.

"She calls it 'looking,'" said the Matron with a laugh. "Just you see
her knitting, Miss Hilton. She's re-footing those stockings. See if you
can tell where she's patched them." She took up a bright blue stocking
from the bench. The blind woman took the other end and felt it
carefully.

"That's not _my_ work," she said with amused contempt. "It's too like
patchwork. Here's mine."

Anne took the stocking and looked. "It's beautiful," she said. "I could
never have told there was a join." The blind woman's hand touched her
arm and wandered slowly upwards, over her face and neck and head.

"I've not seen you before, have I?" she said. "No, I don't think I
have."

The Matron had already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind
woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered
inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women,
the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman,
to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned for ever.

She followed the Matron into the courtyard. Several men in bottle-green
corduroys loitered there, and a tiny old woman shrivelled and imbecile,
who ran to Anne the moment she appeared, holding her skirts high to her
knees, skipping on one foot and then on the other.

"I'll dance for a ha'penny! I'll dance for a ha'penny!" she whined.

"Go on! dance, old lady," said one of the men who was carrying an empty
drawer, which had just been scrubbed, to dry in the sunshine of the
yard. He set it down, end upwards, and stood expectantly. The two other
men paused also.

"Go on! Aren't you going to begin?" said one of them.

"She's a funny old thing, this one," said the Matron to Anne, stopping
to watch, as the old woman, holding her skirts to her knees, her clogs
clacking, and with a smile of imbecility fixed on her face, began to hop
from one thin leg to the other, stamping slowly round on her heels in
the artless manner of a child. All at once she stopped, and, pulling up
her apron, put a corner of it in her mouth, hanging her head and
giggling.

"They're all looking at me, all them men," she giggled. "Fancy me
dancing with all them men looking." One of the men broke into a laugh,
which was changed immediately into an attack of asthma.

"Dance again, old lady!" called a younger man, with the effects of hard
drinking v