re English; bone of our bone.
But we shut our eyes. I have heard of well-to-do folk in the parish who,
giving of their abundance to foreign missions, deny that there is
distress here at home. The most charitable explanation of that falsehood
is to suppose that across their secluded gardens and into their
luxurious rooms, or even to their back-doors, an average English
cottager is too proud to go. Yet it is hard to understand how all signs
of what is so constantly happening can be shut out. For myself, I have
never gone out of my way to look for what I see. I have never invited
confidences. The facts that come to my knowledge seem to be merely the
commonplaces of the village life. If examples of the people's troubles
were wanted, they could be provided almost endlessly, and in almost
endless diversity. But there is one feature that never varies. Year
after year it is still the same tale; all the extra toil, all the
discomfort, or horror, or difficulty, of dealing with sickness falls
immediately on the persons of the family where the sickness occurs; and
it sets its cruel mark upon them, so that the signs can be seen as one
goes about, in the faces of people one does not know. And the women
suffer most.

One winter evening a woman came to my door to see if she could borrow a
bed-rest. Her sister, she said, had been ill with pleurisy and
bronchitis for a week or more, and for the last two days had been
spitting a great deal of blood. The woman looked very poor; she might
have been judged needlessly shabby. A needle and thread would so soon
have remedied sundry defects in her jacket, which was gaping open at the
seams. But her face suggested that there were excuses for her.

I have never forgotten her face, as it showed that evening, although I
have since seen it looking happier. It was dull of colour--the face of
an overworked and over-burdened soul; and it had a sullen expression of
helplessness and resentment. The eyes were weary and pale--I fancied
that trouble had faded the colour out of them. But with all this I got
an impression of something dogged and unbeaten in the woman's temper.
She went away with the bed-rest, apologizing for coming to borrow it.
"'Tis so bad"--those were her words--"'tis so bad to see 'em layin'
there like that, sufferin' so much pain."

I had never seen her before--for it was years ago; and, knowing no
better then, I supposed her to be between forty and fifty years old. In
reality, she can