Dicky, tending the fire (I could have put it into a cocoa-nut), turned round to answer me. He had got quite well again, arm and all. "Mother's _very_ ill," said he in a whisper. "That's the new baby." "The new what?" "The new baby," repeated Dick, pointing to the green bundle. "It's two days old." An old tin slop-pail, turned upside down, stood in the corner of the hearth. I sat down on it to revolve the news and take in the staggering aspect of things. "What do you say, Dick? A baby--two days old?" "Two days," returned Dick. "I'd show him to you but for fear o' waking mother." "He came here the night afore last, he did, while we was all asleep upstairs," interposed the younger of the little girls, Jessy. "Mr. Cole brought him in his pocket: father said so." "'Twasn't the night afore last," corrected 'Liza. "'Twas the night afore that." Poor, pale, pinched faces, with never a smile on any one of them! Nothing takes the spirit out of children like long-continued famine. Stepping across, I looked down at Mrs. Hoar. Her eyes were half open as if she were in a state of stupor. I don't think she knew me: I'm not sure she even saw me. The face was fearfully thin and hollow, and white as death. "Wouldn't mother be better upstairs, Dick?" "She's here 'cause o' the fire," returned Dick, gently dropping on a bit of coal the size of a marble. "There ain't no bed up there, neither; they've brought it down." The "bed" looked like a sack of shavings. From my heart I don't believe it was anything else. At that moment, the door opened and a woman came in; a neighbour, I suppose; her clothes very thin. "It's Mrs. Watts," said Dick. Mrs. Watts curtsied. She looked as starved as they did. It seemed she knew me. "She be very bad. Mr. Ludlow, sir." "She seems so. Is it--fever?" "Law, sir! It's more famine nor fever. If her strength can last out--why, well and good; she may rally. If it don't, she'll go, sir." "Ought she not to have things, Mrs. Watts? Beef-tea and wine, and all that." Mrs. Watts stared a minute, and then her lips parted with a sickly smile. "I don't know where she'd get 'em from, sir! Beef-tea and wine! A drop o' plain tea is a'most more nor us poor can manage to find now. The strike have lasted long, you see, sir. Any way, she's too weak to take much of anything." "If I--if I could bring some beef-tea--or some wine--would it do her good?" "It might just be the saving of her life, Mr. Ludlow, sir." I went galloping home through the snow. Mrs. Todhetley was stoning raisins in the dining-room for the Christmas puddings. Telling her the news in a heap, I sat down to get my breath. "Ah, I was afraid so," she said quietly, and without surprise. "I feared there might be another baby at the Hoars' by this time." "Another baby at the Hoars'!" cried Tod, looking up from my new Shakespeare that he was skimming. "How is it going to get fed?" "I fear that's a problem none of us can solve, Joseph," said she.