Beth should have an excuse.
"Gwendolen would manage it best. She's great at a bargain; and there's
a place not far from here. I'd begin with the worst, if I was you."

"Advise me, then, there's a dear," said Beth, and Ethel Maud Mary
knelt down beside her, and proceeded to advise.

Only a few shillings was the result of the first transaction; but the
better dresses had good trimmings on them, and real lace, which
fetched something, as Ethel Maud Mary declared it would, if sold
separately; so, with the strictest self-denial, Beth was still able to
pay her way and provide for the sick man's necessities.

From the time she put him on the Salisbury treatment, he suffered less
and began to gain strength; but the weather continued severe, and Beth
suffered a great deal herself from exposure and cold and privations of
all kinds. She used to be so hungry sometimes that she hurried past
the provision shops when she had to go out, lest she should not be
able to resist the temptation to go in and buy good food for herself.
If her sympathy with the poor could have been sharpened, it would have
been that winter by some of the sights she saw. Sometimes she was
moved by pity to wrath and rebellion, as on one occasion when she was
passing a house where there had evidently been a fashionable wedding.
The road in front of the house, and the red cloth which covered the
steps and pavement, were thickly strewed with rice, and on this a band
of starving children had pounced, and were scraping it up with their
bony claws of hands, clutching it from each other, fighting for it,
and devouring it raw, while a supercilious servant looked on as though
he were amused. Beth's heart was wrung by the sight, and she hurried
by, cursing the greedy rich who wallow in luxury while children starve
in the streets.

In a squalid road which she had often to cross there was a butcher's
shop, where great sides of good red beef with yellow fat were hung in
the doorway. Coming home one evening after dark, she noticed in front
of her a gaunt little girl who carried a baby on her arm and was
dragging a small child along by the hand. When they came to the
butcher's shop, they stopped to look up at the great sides of beef,
and the younger child stole up to one of them, laid her little hand
upon it caressingly, then kissed it. The butcher came out and ordered
them off, and Beth pursued her way through the mire with tears in her
eyes. She had suffered temptation h