ect my husband," said the woman in answer to a
question. "He's coming home on sick-leave. I had a letter from him a
good while ago saying he was coming home in the _Orontes_."

"I hope you will find that the sea air has done him good," said the
lady, in that tone of unobtrusive sympathy which is so powerfully
attractive,--especially to those who are in trouble. "A sea voyage
frequently has a wonderful effect in restoring invalids. What is his
name?"

"Martin--Fred Martin. He's a corporal now."

"You have not recognised him yet, I suppose?"

"Not yet, Miss," answered Mrs Martin, with an anxious look, and
shivering slightly as she drew a thin worn shawl of many patches closer
round her shoulders. "But he wouldn't expect me to meet him, you see,
knowing that I'm so poor, and live far from Portsmouth. But I was so
anxious, you see, Miss, that our kind Vicar gave me enough money to come
down."

"Where did you spend the night?" asked the lady, quickly.

The poor woman hesitated, and at last said she had spent the night
walking about the streets.

"You see, Miss," she explained apologetically, "I didn't know a soul in
the town, and I couldn't a-bear to go into any o' the public-houses;
besides, I had no money, for the journey down took nearly all of it."

"Oh, I am so sorry that you didn't know of our Institute," said the
lady, with much sympathy in voice and look; "for we provide
accommodation for soldiers' wives who come, like you, to meet their
husbands returning from abroad, and we charge little, or even nothing,
if they are too poor to pay."

"Indeed, Miss! I wish I had known of it. But in the morning I had the
luck to meet a policeman who directed me to a coffee-tavern in a place
called Nobbs Lane--you'll not know it, Miss, for it's in a very poor
part o' the town--where I got a breakfast of as much hot pea-soup and
bread as I could eat for three-ha'pence, an' had a good rest beside the
fire too. They told me it was kept by a Miss Robinson. God bless her
whoever she is! for I do believe I should have been dead by now if I
hadn't got the rest and the breakfast."

The woman shivered again as she spoke, and drew the thin shawl still
closer, for a sharp east wind was blowing over the jetty at the time.

"Come with me; you are cold. I know Nobbs Lane well. We have a shed
and fire here on the jetty to shelter people while waiting. There, you
need not fear to miss your husband, for the men won't land