Mary laid the breakfast on the bed as usual, and again awakened her mother, who, after staring into vacancy for a few moments, forced herself to her elbow, and then, with sudden determination, sat up in the bed and bent her mind inflexibly on her breakfast. She drank two cups of tea greedily, but the bread had no taste in her mouth, and after swallowing a morsel she laid it aside. "I don't know what's up with me at all, at all," said she. "Maybe it's a cold, mother," replied Mary. "Do I look bad, now?" Mary scrutinized her narrowly. "No," she answered, "your face is redder than it does be, and your eyes are shiny. I think you look splendid and well. What way do you feel?" "I don't feel at all, except that I'm sleepy. Give me the glass in my hand, dearie, till I see what I'm like." Mary took the glass from the wall and handed it to her. "I don't look bad at all. A bit of color always suited me. Look at my tongue, though, it's very, very dirty; it's a bad tongue altogether. My mother had a tongue like that, Mary, when she died." "Have you any pain?" said her daughter. "No, dearie; there is a buzz in the front of my head as if something was spinning round and round very quickly, and that makes my eyes tired, and there's a sort of feeling as if my head was twice as heavy as it should be. Hang up the glass again. I'll try and get a sleep, and maybe I'll be better when I waken up. Run you out and get a bit of steak, and we'll stew it down and make beef tea, and maybe that will do me good. Give me my purse out of the pocket of my skirt." Mary found the purse and brought it to the bed. Her mother opened it and brought out a thimble, a bootlace, five buttons, one sixpenny piece and a penny. She gave Mary the sixpence. "Get half a pound of leg beef," said she, "and then we'll have fourpence left for bread and tea; no, take the other penny, too, and get half a pound of pieces at the butcher's for twopence and a twopenny tin of condensed milk, that's fourpence, and a three ha'penny loaf and one penny for tea, that's sixpence ha'penny, and get onions with the odd ha'penny, and we'll put them in the beef tea. Don't forget, dearie, to pick lean bits of meat; them fellows do be always trying to stick bits of bone and gristle on a body. Tell him it's for beef tea for your mother, and that I'm not well at all, and ask how Mrs. Quinn is; she hasn't been down in the shop for a long time. I'll go to sleep now. I'll have to go to work in the morning whatever happens, because there isn't any money in the house at all. Come home as quick as you can, dearie."