d anything about it," said Anne.

"What sort of a place is it, Miss Hilton?" asked Mrs Hankworth in the
tone of one who might be enquiring after a prison or worse.

"They'd a nice big fire," said Anne, "and until you came to look at the
people, it looked quite comfortable. But when you came to look at those
poor things, and thought that that was all they had to expect, it made
your heart ache."

"She's a good matron I've heard," said Mrs Hankworth.

"She's a kind woman," returned Anne, heartily, "and I suppose it's a
good thing they've got such a place to shelter them. But it seems a poor
end somehow, and not a place for young people. There seems to be no hope
in it, and yet it's clean, and they've got good food."

"Other people's bread doesn't taste like your own to them that's been
used to having any," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I expect, if you've never
had any of your own, you're glad to get anything. I suppose Burton's out
of the country."

"Nobody seems to know rightly," said Anne. "Jane says not a word. I
don't suppose she really knows anything."

"She'll come to see that she's better without him," said Mrs Hankworth,
taking up the prints and working the butter emphatically. "But she must
work like the rest of us. It's generally the long clothes that gets left
over," she added, "the short ones get worn out by some of them, but I'll
look and see what I can find. It'll be rather nice to be looking out
baby-things again. There's nothing you miss more than a baby, when
you've had one or other about for a good many years. But she'd never do
any good with that Burton about."

It seemed not so much the fact that a girl would give up her reputation
for a man, that impressed Mrs Hankworth unpleasantly, but that she would
give it into the keeping of _such_ a man. She did not expect impossible
things of anybody. No one belonging to her had ever made a slip, and
such a happening seemed to be so remote a possibility for anyone
"connected," that she could spare great charity for the rest of the
world. Nor did she believe in "driving people." If a girl had made a
mistake, that was no reason why everyone else should make another, and
her good sense revolted against a perpetually drawn-out punishment for
any fault. Her disgust at this fault, not very deep, being submerged
almost as it arose, by the immediate necessity for doing something, and
a reminiscent understanding of the timidity and dread with which the
first child-