"A girl can't know what a man is thinking of, and we takes the worst for the best." "I don't say that I was altogether blameless but--" "You didn't know he was that bad." Esther hesitated. "I knew he was like other men. But he told me--he promised me he'd marry me." Mrs. Saunders did not answer, and Esther said, "You don't believe I'm speaking the truth." "Yes, I do, dearie. I was only thinking. You're my daughter; no mother had a better daughter. There never was a better girl in this world." "I was telling you, mother--" "But I don't want no telling that my Esther ain't a bad girl." Mrs. Saunders sat nodding her head, a sweet, uncritical mother; and Esther understood how unselfishly her mother loved her, and how simply she thought of how she might help her in her trouble. Neither spoke, and Esther continued dressing. "You 'aven't told me what you think of your room. It looks pretty, don't you think? I keeps it as nice as I can. Jenny hung up them pictures. They livens it up a bit," she said, pointing to the coloured supplements, from the illustrated papers, on the wall. "The china shepherd and shepherdess, you know; they was at Barnstaple." When Esther was dressed, she and Mrs. Saunders knelt down and said a prayer together. Then Esther said she would make up her room, and when that was done she insisted on helping her mother with the housework. In the afternoon she sat with her sisters, helping them with their dogs, folding the paper into the moulds, pasting it down, or cutting the skins into the requisite sizes. About five, when the children had had their tea, she and her mother went for a short walk. Very often they strolled through Victoria Station, amused by the bustle of the traffic, or maybe they wandered down the Buckingham Palace Road, attracted by the shops. And there was a sad pleasure in these walks. The elder woman had borne years of exceeding trouble, and felt her strength failing under her burdens, which instead of lightening were increasing; the younger woman was full of nervous apprehension for the future and grief for the past. But they loved each other deeply. Esther threw herself in the way to protect her mother, whether at a dangerous crossing or from the heedlessness of the crowd at a corner, and often a passer-by turned his head and looked after them, attracted by the solicitude which the younger woman showed for the elder. In those walks very little was said. They walked in silence, slipping now and then into occasional speech, and here and there a casual allusion or a broken sentence would indicate what was passing in their minds. One day some flannel and shirts in a window caught Mrs. Saunder's eye, and she said-- "It is time, Esther, you thought about your baby clothes. One must be prepared; one never knows if one will go one's full time." The words came upon Esther with something of a shock, helping her to realise the imminence of her trouble.