"Yes, ma'am," replied Grannie solemnly; "it is the hand that has brought me here. I was good at needlework in my day, ma'am, but 'twas writing as did it." "Writing! did you write much?" asked the matron. "No, ma'am, only twice a year at the most, but even them two letters cost me sore; they brought on a disease in the hand; it is called writers' cramp. It is an awful complaint, and it has brought me here, ma'am." The labor matron looked very hard at Grannie. She did not understand her words, nor the expression on her brave face. Grannie by no means wore the helpless air which characterizes most old women when they come to the workhouse. "Well," she said, after a pause, "hurry with your bath; you needn't have another for a fortnight; but once a fortnight you must wash here. At your age, and with your hand so bad, you won't be expected to do any manual work at all." "I'd rayther, ef you please, ma'am," said Grannie. "I'm not accustomed to settin' idle." "Well, I don't see that you can do anything; that hand is quite past all use, but perhaps the doctor will take a look at it to-morrow. Now get through that bath, and I'll take you to the room where the other old women are." "Good Lord, keep me from thinkin' o' the past," said Grannie when the door closed behind her. She got through the bath and put on her workhouse dress, and felt, with a chill all through her little frame, that she had passed suddenly from life to death. The matron came presently to fetch her. "This way, please," she said, in a tart voice. She had treated Grannie with just a shadow of respect as long as she wore her own nice and dainty clothes, but now that she was in the workhouse garb, she looked like any other bowed down little woman. She belonged, in short, to the failures of life. She was hurried down one or two long passages, then through a big room, empty at present, which the matron briefly told her was the "Able-bodied Women's Ward," and then into another very large room, where a bright fire burnt, and where several women, perhaps fifty or sixty, were seated on benches, doing some light jobs of needlework, or pretending to read, or openly dozing away their time. They were all dressed just like Grannie, and took little or no notice when she came in. She was only one more failure, to join the failures in the room. These old women were all half dead, and another old woman was coming to share their living grave. The matron said something hastily, and shut the door behind her. Grannie looked round; an almost wild light lit up her blue eyes for a moment, then it died out, and she went softly and quietly across the room. "Ef you are cold, ma'am, perhaps you'll like to set by the fire," said an old body who must have been at least ten years Grannie's senior. "Thank you, ma'am, I'll be much obleeged," said Grannie, and she sat down.