“One of those noble narrow women, Mrs. Brown, upon whom life bears down so heavily. Yet she carries out her programme with a greatness of spirit which is almost demoralizing to one who tries to look at things as they are. I don’t know what there is in her life that carries her on so victoriously; for one never hears her utter a complaint against the buffets she has received from fate, or against the restrictions that her dismal surroundings impose on her nature. I have never heard an impatient word upon her lips, yet every morning, summer and winter, she rises at the hour of five, performs those domestic functions that can bring no satisfaction to her, and presently goes forth to labors still more arduous and equally devoid of meaning. What there is to carry her on I don’t know. Why that inflexible spirit has not been broken these many years I cannot conjecture.” “She has got into the habit of going on, sir, I suppose,” said the charwoman. “The habit must be a very strange one, Mrs. Brown, when to-morrow is always the same as yesterday.” “It is like being a clock, sir, which goes on because it has been wound up.” “Yes, but I never found a clock that could wind up itself. Every clock must have some kind of a key.” “It is God, sir, who is the key,” said the charwoman. “That throws us back,” said Northcote, “to our original necessity to have a religion. To my mind, Mrs. Brown, you have indicated that need in a very lucid and practical manner. And how, Mrs. Brown, as you appear to have given some thought to these things, do you suppose this reticent mother of mine views this God who holds the key to the watch, who winds it up and keeps it going? How would you say she regards Him personally?” “Perhaps she doesn’t think about Him much, sir. Perhaps as a girl she troubled her head about Him a bit; but when she got older and had to take heavy burdens on her shoulders, she was always too tired to think of Him, except when she said her prayers.” “Do you suppose there have been times when in her great fatigue she has fallen asleep while she has been in the act of saying them?” “Yes, sir, I suppose there may have been,” said the old woman. “So, then, you would say there is nothing definite, forceful, all-compelling about this God of hers? You would say He had no particular personality to speak of?” “Perhaps He is very real to her, sir, just as to the watch the key must be very real that winds it up and keeps it going.” “I suppose, Mrs. Brown, you have never by any lucky chance arrived at the reason why He does wind you up and keep you going? Yet surely you have asked yourself the question why it is necessary that you should be wound up and kept going.” “I may have done, sir, now and again. But then it has been a wicked thought.”