she entered. The armchair had been moved back, and no one sat at the
fire. She sighed and turned to Elizabeth.

"Yes, it's very comfortable," said Elizabeth. "I'm glad I came. It's
nice to have the bed made every day. You'll have heard that Jane Evans
is out of her troubles?"

Anne nodded.

"It's best, I think," said Elizabeth. "The world's none too kind, and
she was a depending sort of girl. She got out of it easy enough.
There'll be some disappointed though," she added with her old cynicism.

"Don't let's be hard in our judgments," said Anne, sadly.




CHAPTER XIX


The habit of working for another is so fixed in the lives of poor women,
that the interruption of it becomes a kind of second death, almost as
difficult to bear as the death of the affection which is itself almost a
kind of habit. When Anne returned from market, and sat down, her house
seemed to have become a little emptier, because the girl whose welfare
she had carried with her for so many months was beyond her reach. She
took down her Bible to read it, and find relief for her trouble. She was
a woman who had had "experience"--that experience which comes to each as
a kind of special revelation, a thing so surprising, that it appears