had seen amid the black stockings. Her face was large and flat,
youthless, ageless, crowned with an ugly black hat, poorly ribboned; her
hands were clasped clumsily on the skirt of her poor cotton dress,
ill-fitting. There was no expression in her singing, no effort to
express, no instinctive conception of the idea. The people only listened
because she was blind and they were poor, and so they pitied her. The
beautiful river of her hymn meant nothing, to her or to them. It might
be; it might not be; it was not in question. She cried to them that she
was blind and that the blind poor must eat if they would live and that
they desire to live despite the city by-laws. She begged, this blind
girl, standing with rent shoes in the sloppy mud. In Sydney, in 1889, in
the workingman's paradise, she stood on the kerb, this blind girl, and
begged--begged from her own people. And in their poverty, their
weariness, their brutishness, they pitied her. None mocked, and many
paused, and some gave.

They never thought of her being an impostor. They did not pass her on to
the hateful charity that paid parasites dole out for the rich. They did
not think that she made a fortune out of her pitifulness and hunt her
with canting harshness as a nuisance and a cheat. Her harsh voice did not
jar on them. Her discords did not shock their supersensitive ears. They
only knew that they, blinded in her stead, must beg for bread and shelter
while good Christians glut themselves and while fat law-makers whitewash
the unpleasant from the sight of the well-to-do. In her helplessness they
saw, unknowing it, their own helplessness, saw in her Humanity wronged
and suffering and in need. Those who gave gave to themselves, gave as an
impulsive offering to the divine impulse which drives the weak together
and aids them to survive.

Ned wanted to give the blind girl something but he felt ashamed to give