d.

"Keep your shawl over your shoulders, Maggie. You mustn't catch cold
your first day out of bed!"

"She doesn't look fit for much does she?" said the other young mother
contemptuously. "Ten days and then to be as washed out as that."

One of the old women, who had remained motionless, got up slowly and
stretched out her hand, pointing at the girl vindictively.

"That girl's next the fire! That was _my_ place before she come."

"Oh, you're all right, mother," said the Matron cheerfully, pushing her
gently back to her seat. The old woman mumbled to herself as she sank
back into the same stupor, in the midst of which she brooded on her
grievance. The other old woman began in a hard, high voice without
raising her head:

"That's the way they do in this place. Push out the old ones."

"Now you two don't begin talking and grumbling," interrupted the Matron
decidedly. "You're as well treated as anyone else."

At this moment Anne made a movement in the corner where she had stood
unnoticed. From every bench withered hands were thrust at her, some
grasping her arm, some her mantle, some were held open at her face.

"Give me a ha'penny--just a ha'penny!" screamed a dozen old voices. "A
ha'penny! Spare a ha'penny!"

"Now then," interrupted the Matron, taking two of the women and leading
them back to their places. "What good would a ha'penny do to _any_ of
you?" She touched two other women, and they retired grumbling to their
seats, all except one tall, bony old creature, with a frightful palsy,
who kept hold of Anne by the arm, repeating in a voice which was more
like an angry scream than the whisper which her deaf ears imagined it to
be.

"Those other women'll all beg from you. They'd take the bread out of
anybody's mouth. Give me a ha'penny Missis, only a ha'penny," and her
avaricious, bony hand pinched Anne's arm tightly as though she already
clutched the coin. The Matron, using both her own hands, unfastened her
hands as she might have done a knot. The old woman shook with rage and
palsy, and fell rather than sat down on her seat under the flowering
geraniums in the window.

"Now, I _knew_ there was somebody strange in the room," said the blind
woman. "Just let me have a look at her."

She tucked her knitting needles into her apron-string. She had been for
many years in the workhouse infirmary, where she knitted and repaired
the thick stockings worn by the inmates. She had become a kind of pride
of the ward.