Then, because she was so very tired and weak and ill, at last she told me. She had had attacks of internal pains several times during the winter, and the expense and medicine had used up all their little savings, and with a burst of bitter tears she said they owed five pounds, and had nothing more of value they could sell; and so on—all the piteous tale—of high prices and an income so minute that only by the most careful management and hard work could it be made to do in ordinary times. Gradually all the little jewels had gone and bits of plate, the food had been cut down, and she had had to turn her clothes and patch and mend and work till all her strength had gone, and now that she was ill it was ’All too much for Alfred.’ The poor little soul turned faint and sick then from sheer exhaustion and lack of food. I sent her Alfred flying out for milk: there was only tinned stuff in the house, ’it went farther,’ and with a reckless hand I beat up their only egg, which he informed me anxiously he had been saving for her to-morrow’s dinner. And then I flung the last few drops of brandy in the glass and made her drink it all and eat some tiny sandwiches, and a few grapes. The food revived her and a scrap of colour came into her cheeks. ’Now,’ I said sternly, ’I’m going to fetch a cab, and roll you up in blankets and take you to my house and nurse you up a bit.’ Of course she protested, said it was impossible. ’Why?’ I demanded. Oh, heaps of reasons, gave a few, hadn’t a clean nightie, for one thing, she had only two and had been too ill to wash the other. She had so hoped there would have been some in the last parcel from the Charitable Clothing Fund. ’But I have simply dozens,’ I wailed. Yes, I know, there wasn’t an ounce of tact in that remark, but I was thinking of my own luxurious room, fires every night, all the pettings and scoldings I get if I’m not well, and how nobody asks me if I will have the doctor or takes the slightest notice of me if I say I won’t, and of all the clothes I’d got and the general and disgusting air of affluence there is about the family. I hated myself and all my relatives. Yes, I did, the whole blessed lot of them. ’But I couldn’t leave my husband,’ said Mrs Williams. ’Of course, he’s coming too, my spare room is crying out for visitors.’ ’But we are strangers, you can’t take us in like this.’ ’But it was "a stranger and ye took Me in," He said. Oh,’ I continued, throwing grammar to the winds, ’why didn’t He tell a person what to do when the stranger won’t be took in.’ She laughed at that and then consented. So I flew home and told the tale to Ross and Nannie in the nursery.