"That's the way they do in this place. Push out the old ones."

"Now you two don't begin talking and grumbling," interrupted the Matron
decidedly. "You're as well treated as anyone else."

At this moment Anne made a movement in the corner where she had stood
unnoticed. From every bench withered hands were thrust at her, some
grasping her arm, some her mantle, some were held open at her face.

"Give me a ha'penny--just a ha'penny!" screamed a dozen old voices. "A
ha'penny! Spare a ha'penny!"

"Now then," interrupted the Matron, taking two of the women and leading
them back to their places. "What good would a ha'penny do to _any_ of
you?" She touched two other women, and they retired grumbling to their
seats, all except one tall, bony old creature, with a frightful palsy,
who kept hold of Anne by the arm, repeating in a voice which was more
like an angry scream than the whisper which her deaf ears imagined it to
be.

"Those other women'll all beg from you. They'd take the bread out of
anybody's mouth. Give me a ha'penny Missis, only a ha'penny," and her
avaricious, bony hand pinched Anne's arm tightly as though she already
clutched the coin. The Matron, using both her own hands, unfastened her
hands as she might have done a knot. The old woman shook with rage and
palsy, and fell rather than sat down on her seat under the flowering
geraniums in the window.

"Now, I _knew_ there was somebody strange in the room," said the blind