Esther hid her face in the pillow. Jenny waited, and an anxious look of self began to appear on the vulgar London street face. "Look 'ere, Esther, you can cry when I've gone; I've a deal to say to yer and time is short." "Oh, Jenny, don't speak like that! Father, was he kind to mother?" "I dunno that he thought much about it; he spent 'alf 'is time in the public, 'e did. He said he couldn't abide the 'ouse with a woman a-screaming like that. One of the neighbours came in to look after mother, and at last she had the doctor." Esther looked at her sister through streaming tears, and the woman in the other bed alluded to the folly of poor women being confined "in their own 'omes--in a 'ome where there is a drunken 'usband, and most 'omes is like that nowadays." At that moment Esther's baby awoke crying for the breast. The little lips caught at the nipple, the wee hand pressed the white curve, and in a moment Esther's face took that expression of holy solicitude which Raphael sublimated in the Virgin's downward-gazing eyes. Jenny watched the gluttonous lips, interested in the spectacle, and yet absorbed in what she had come to say to her sister. "Your baby do look 'ealthy." "Yes, and he is too, not an ache or a pain. He's as beautiful a boy as ever lived. But think of poor mother, Jenny, think of poor mother." "I do think of her, Esther. But I can't help seeing your baby. He's like you, Esther. I can see a look of you in 'is eyes. But I don't know that I should care to 'ave a baby meself--the expense comes very 'eavy on a poor girl." "Please God, my baby shall never want for anything as long as I can work for him. But, Jenny, my trouble will be a lesson to you. I hope you will always be a good girl, and never allow yourself to be led away; you promise me?" "Yes, I promise." "A 'ome like ours, a drunken father, and now that poor mother is gone it will be worse than ever. Jenny, you are the eldest and must do your best to look after the younger ones, and as much as possible to keep father from the public-house. I shall be away; the moment I'm well enough I must look out for a place." "That's just what I came to speak to you about. Father is going to Australia. He is that tired of England, and as he lost his situation on the railway he has made up his mind to emigrate. It is pretty well all arranged; he has been to an agency and they say he'll 'ave to pay two pounds a 'ead, and that runs to a lot of money in a big family like ours. So I'm likely to get left, for father says that I'm old enough to look after myself. He's willing to take me if I gets the money, not without. That's what I came to tell yer about."