As I look back and think of these things, I am afraid we imposed upon her. At the time, we had twinges of conscience, especially when we caught her "cutting about" with more than her usual zeal. She was not designed by nature to "cut about" at all. To grow old with her meant "to lose the glory of the form." She was short, she had an immense breadth of hip, and she waddled rather than walked. When, in her haste, her cap would get tilted to one side, and she would give a smudge to her nose or her cheek, she was really a grotesque little figure, and the twinges became acute. To see her "cutting about" so unbecomingly for us at an age when she should have been allowed, unburdened, to crawl towards death, was to shift the heaviest responsibility to our shoulders and to make us the one barrier between her and the workhouse. We could not watch the tragedy of old age in our own household without playing a more important part in it than we liked. Her cheerfulness was the greater marvel when I learned how little reason life had given her for it. In her rare outbursts of confidence, with excuses for the liberty, she told me that she was London born and bred, that she had gone into service young, and that she had married before she was twenty. I fancy she must have been pretty as a girl. I know she was "bonny," and "a fine one" for work, and I am not surprised that Trim wanted to marry her. He was a skilled plasterer by trade, got good wages, and was seldom out of a job. They had a little house in some far-away mean street, and though the children who would have been welcome never came, there was little else to complain of.