The elder woman, recovering her self-control as quickly as she had lost it, followed her into the sunshine beyond the low door, and arrested her with mingled tears and apologies. Gwen, she said in quaintest English and Welsh, was a mad _iolin_--just a silly nonsense--though it was just true the child wass better to die. It was not as the 'nother one--here she looked sorrowfully at a five-year-old who was busy making mud pies by the waterspout, and shook her head--that one wass two shillin' and sixpence a week. Yess, indeed! because her daughter wass for ever in the good shentleman placiss; but Gwen--silly nonsense, Gwen--she could pay nothing. She was not all wise---- Aura, staring out into the sunshine which happed the whole beautiful world-expanse of hill and wood in its magic mantle, looked in the woman's really grief-stricken face, in slow, almost incredulous wonder. "You mean that--that--" she hesitated, pointing to the child--"that your other daughter in service pays you half a crown?" Something in her voice made Mrs. Evans mop her eyes with her apron still more strenuously. "It is the price," she protested; "there is many askiss three shillin'. Mrs. Jhones and she have two, an' Mrs. Daviss, an'----" "And Gwen gave nothing!" The words seemed to Aura to burden the sunshine; she turned swiftly to go, feeling the need of escape. "But the ladiess," sobbed Mrs. Evans, "would be given a shillings or so when they be comning. Yess, indeed! a shillings or so." Aura wheeled, the lilies still in her arms. "I have no money," she cried, her voice ringing with passionate scorn, "I never have any money, thank God!" So with quick, springing step, her whole young soul aflame with indignation, she was off breasting the hill, leaving the hollows behind her, wishing with all her heart that she could have carried the dead baby with her. To call it accursed! To count it unbaptized! The darling lying there so peaceful, so still, so waxen, so like the lilies. Ah! if she could only take it away from all the sordid thoughts, what burial would not her fingers compass there on the bosom of the kindly earth! For it and for the lilies. How soft it should lie, how flower-decked! Yes, the great white petals should shield the little white face from the touch of the close, damp earth, and it should sleep--sleep--sleep! The tears ran down her cheeks silently as, almost at the limit of her young and vigorous pace, she passed on, passed upwards, pursued by the one overmastering impulse to get away, to find some safe resting-place for what she would fain have carried.