means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden
against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one
most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come
to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or
more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be
acknowledged publicly a failure.

When this last pride is taken away, there sometimes appears a kind of
patience which is not really that of despair, but which is nearer to
that attained by great saints after long effort and discipline--the
mental equilibrium which is the result of desire quenched, of
expectation for further good for oneself at an end. What the saints
attain by a painful and mortifying life, the poor receive as a gift from
the tender mercies of the world, receiving also the passionate pity of
Jesus, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."

"If she could only work as she used, and be 'beholden' to nobody." She
sighed and lay still, her mind an abyss of bitterness.

The stout newcomer, step-daughter to the unfortunate woman, turned to
Anne, jerking her head backwards to indicate the other woman in bed with
an expression of satisfaction which said quite plainly, "That's the way
to settle _her_." Then she ignored her totally, except that she moved as
noisily, and spoke as loudly as she could.

She was a rather pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an obstinate
mouth. There was, so to speak, "no nonsense about her." She was one of
those women of coarse fibre, whose chief diversion consists in annoying
the sensibilities of others. They exist more frequently in the
middleclass than among the poor, whose common dependence teaches them