Elfie took one and examined it. "Well, I shouldn't know how to put all them bits in the right places," she said. This was a difficulty that had never struck Susie. She had helped her mother to make these coarse blue shirts—sewing, hemming, and stitching in turn; but she had never put one together entirely by herself. She looked up in a little dismay. "I don't think I know how to do it either," she said in a tone of perplexity. But Elfie turned and turned the shirt about, and at last she said, "Look here, Susie; you'll have to keep one of these back when you take the others home, and then we'll find out how they're to be done between us." Susie began to think Elfie almost as wise as her mother. She seemed to know how to manage everything, and before evening came she began to look up to her as a friend as well as a companion. Elfie hardly liked sleeping in the room with that long stretch of whiteness at the farther end. She had never seen Susie's mother while living, and would not have raised the sheet now to look at the still, calm face for anything. She would rather have gone out to sleep in one of the holes or corners of the Adelphi arches, even risking an encounter with the rats, than sleep there; but for Susie's sake she determined to stay. The next morning she persuaded Susie to sit down to her sewing, while she went out to look for something to eat. Meals taken in the ordinary way Elfie had no idea of; she was used to look about the streets for any scraps of food she could pick up, in the same way that a homeless, hungry dog might do, and so it was no hardship for her to go without her breakfast. Susie had often had to wait for it lately—wait all day, feeling faint and hungry, but obliged to sew and stitch on still, that her mother might get the work home in time. She had to do this to-day, and then could not finish all. But she tied up her bundle, leaving the unfinished one out for a pattern; and then put on her bonnet to go forth to tell the sad story to another—that her mother was dead, and would never sew shirts any more. As the man counted the shirts over, she said, "Please, sir, I've left one at home, it ain't quite finished; but mother—" "There, there, child, I can't listen to tales about your mother," interrupted the man; "she's always been honest, and I won't grumble about the shirt this time; but it must not occur again. I can't give you so many either this time, trade is getting dull now." And pushing Susie's bundle towards her, he turned to another workwoman, and Susie went out wishing she had had the courage to say her mother was dead; for she felt as though she was deceiving him, taking this work to do by herself. As she went back, Elfie met her. "I've got a nice lot of cold potatoes at home," she said, "and a big handful of cherries that I picked up in the market; and I've seen the work-house man, and told him you ain't going with him." "What did you say?" asked Susie.