urges. "You will not be deaf to
the agonised entreaty of such a broken suppliant as I am?"

"O dear, dear, dear!" cries Sally. "What shall I say, or can say! Don't
talk of prayers. Prayers are to be put up to the Good Father of All, and
not to nurses and such. And there! I am only to hold my place for half
a year longer, till another young woman can be trained up to it. I am
going to be married. I shouldn't have been out last night, and I
shouldn't have been out to-night, but that my Dick (he is the young man I
am going to be married to) lies ill, and I help his mother and sister to
watch him. Don't take on so, don't take on so!"

"O good Sally, dear Sally," moans the lady, catching at her dress
entreatingly. "As you are hopeful, and I am hopeless; as a fair way in
life is before you, which can never, never, be before me; as you can
aspire to become a respected wife, and as you can aspire to become a
proud mother, as you are a living loving woman, and must die; for GOD'S
sake hear my distracted petition!"

"Deary, deary, deary ME!" cries Sally, her desperation culminating in the
pronoun, "what am I ever to do? And there! See how you turn my own
words back upon me. I tell you I am going to be married, on purpose to
make it clearer to you that I am going to leave, and therefore couldn't
help you if I would, Poor Thing, and you make it seem to my own self as
if I was cruel in going to be married and not helping you. It ain't
kind. Now, is it kind, Poor Thing?"

"Sally! Hear me, my dear. My entreaty is for no help in the future. It
applies to what is past. It is only to be told in two words."

"There! This is worse and worse," cries Sally, "supposing that I
understand what two words you mean."

"You do understand. What are the names they have given my poor baby? I
ask no more than that. I have read of the customs of the place. He has
been christened in the chapel, and registered by some surname in the
book. He was received last Monday evening. What have they called him?"

Down upon her knees in the foul mud of the by-way into which they have
strayed--an empty street without a thoroughfare giving on the dark
gardens of the Hospital--the lady would drop in her passionate entreaty,
but that Sally prevents her.

"Don't! Don't! You make me feel as if I was setting myself up to be
good. Let me look in your pretty face again. Put your two hands in
mine. Now, promise. You will never ask me a