Poor little motherless thing!"

She seemed to take it quite for granted that the child must be
motherless; in her loving, motherly heart she could not think of such a
crime as a mother destroying her own child. I saw that all the men who
stood round the body were struck with this.

"What will be done with it?" she asked.

"It will go to the dead-house at the work-house," said the
superintendent, "and the parish will bury it."

Then I stood forward.

"No!" I cried; "if the authorities will permit, I will take upon myself
the expense of burying that little child--it shall not have a pauper's
funeral; it shall be buried in the beautiful green cemetery in the Lewes
Road, and it shall have a white marble cross at the head of its grave."

"You are very good, sir," said the superintendent, and the pitiful woman
cried out:

"Heaven bless you, sir! I would do the same thing myself if I could
afford it."

"There must be an inquest," said some one in the crowd; "we ought to
know whether the child was dead before it was thrown into the water."

"I hope to Heaven it was!" cried the woman.