woman. "Just let me have a look at her."

She tucked her knitting needles into her apron-string. She had been for
many years in the workhouse infirmary, where she knitted and repaired
the thick stockings worn by the inmates. She had become a kind of pride
of the ward. Beyond the misfortune of her blindness she had no defect,
and her mind was alert and cheerful.

"She calls it 'looking,'" said the Matron with a laugh. "Just you see
her knitting, Miss Hilton. She's re-footing those stockings. See if you
can tell where she's patched them." She took up a bright blue stocking
from the bench. The blind woman took the other end and felt it
carefully.

"That's not _my_ work," she said with amused contempt. "It's too like
patchwork. Here's mine."

Anne took the stocking and looked. "It's beautiful," she said. "I could
never have told there was a join." The blind woman's hand touched her
arm and wandered slowly upwards, over her face and neck and head.

"I've not seen you before, have I?" she said. "No, I don't think I
have."

The Matron had already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind
woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered
inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women,
the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman,
to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned for ever.