“No, dear,” answered Mary. “It’s only one or two who have nowhere else to go.” She must have walked mechanically. Looking up she found herself in her own street. And as she reached her doorway the tears came suddenly.!

She stooped and kissed the child, straining her to her almost fiercely. But the child’s lips were cold. She did not look back. CHAPTER VIII

Suddenly the vision of old Chelsea Church rose up before her with its little motherly old pew-opener. She had so often been meaning to go and see her again, but something had always interfered. She hunted through her drawers and found a comparatively sober-coloured shawl, and tucked it under her cloak. The service was just commencing when she reached the church. Mary Stopperton showed her into a seat and evidently remembered her. “I want to see you afterwards,” she whispered; and Mary Stopperton had smiled and nodded. The service, with its need for being continually upon the move, bored her; she was not in the mood for it. And the sermon, preached by a young curate who had not yet got over his Oxford drawl, was uninteresting. She had half hoped that the wheezy old clergyman, who had preached about Calvary on the evening she had first visited the church, would be there again. She wondered what had become of him, and if it were really a fact that she had known him when she was a child, or only her fancy. It was strange how vividly her memory of him seemed to pervade the little church. She had the feeling he was watching her from the shadows. She waited for Mary in the vestibule, and gave her the shawl, making her swear on the big key of the church door that she would wear it herself and not give it away. The little old pew-opener’s pink and white face flushed with delight as she took it, and the thin, work-worn hands fingered it admiringly. “But I may lend it?” she pleaded. “Who among you is the more honoured? The miser or the giver: he who heaps up riches for himself or he who labours for others?” “It is what I should love,” she answered. “Tell me what to do.” She was not conscious of the low, vibrating tone in which she spoke.