To-day the saucepans and baking tins arrived. I was thrilled, so was ’Our Lady of Ventre,’ she helped me to unpack them while the other lady scrubbed the shelves. ’Could you wash them, do you think?’ I asked. ’Oh, yes, mum, as long as I don’t do no scrubbing; you see, it’s my——’ but I changed the conversation quickly by asking how her husband was. ’I ’ad a field card yesterday’ (I wish I had), she answered, ’’e was all right then; my ’usband’s in the calvery, in the calvery ’e is, always was a one for ’orses.’ ’So is mine,’ I said. ’Fond of hall dumb hanimals, my ’usband is.’ ’Ah, a kind man,’ I answered. ’’E is that,’ she said, waving the lid of a saucepan at me, ’never laid a ’and on me or any of the children, and what I’ve cost ’im in doctors you never would believe; you see, it’s my inside, mum,’ and she took a header into it, which I was powerless to prevent. ’Why, when I first went out walkin’ with ’im, mum, only nineteen I was at the time, I got such a hawful pain in my inside they took me to the ’orsepital, took me kidney right out they did, never thought I would ’ave lived they didn’t. Me young man, ’im what’s me ’usband now, you understand, mum, ’e come to see me when I began to git over it a bit; fair upset ’e was when the sister told ’im about me kidney. I says to ’im, "Alb," I says, "I’m sure if we gets married I shall cost you a hawful lot in doctors, and as I lay ’ere," I said, "I’ve thought it’s ’ardly fair to expect a man to feel the same to ’is young woman when she ain’t got all ’er orgins, and if you feel you’d rather ’ave some other young lady, why, say so now," I says, and I cried, I did, I was that weak and low, for I thought a deal of Alb, I did, and I didn’t want to lose ’im, mum.’ ’"Liza," ’e says, "don’t never talk like that again, my gal, I’d rather ’ave you with no hinside than any other young lady what’s got all her guts." Always one was Alb to speak ’is mind, and ’e fair blubbed, ’e did, ’e was that upset, and then the nurse come along again and sent ’im off, but I never forgot it, mum’ (I shouldn’t have either), ’and, as I say, I’ve never ’ad an unkind word from ’im. ’Elped with the ’ousework, too, many a time, and always lights the kitchen fire and brings me up a cup of tea, ’e does, of a morning, suppose that’s why I miss ’im so now ’e’s in France,’ and a tear splashed down into the saucepan she had started washing. Oh, it was really very sweet: the little woman’s eyes were all alight with love at the remembrance of her Alb’s renunciation of her ’orgin,’ which, after all, was inspired by the same divine spark which caused Dante to adore his Beatrice, Jacob to serve fourteen years for Rachel, and Elizabeth to cry out to Robert,— ’How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. . . . . . . I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of all my life! and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.’