The sister, shortly after this terrific crisis in their affairs, was carried into the hospital, and, after three months of terrible pain, which she bore like a martyr, went to join in heavenly places the "poor mother" and the father who had been in some elusive fashion connected with sublunary drains. "And after that," says Miss Stipp, getting up and resting her hands on the pail of dirty water, and looking down into it as if she saw the faces of her poor mother, her sister, and all the dead babies of the other sister shining up at her from the muddy bottom, "I came on the parish, and I've been on it ever since, and nice kind gentlemen they are, and I couldn't be treated better." "People are kind to you?" I inquire. "Very kind to me they are," she answers. "I often get a shillin' given to me in the street, and the other evenin' a lady in the Boro'--nicely dressed, she was, in black--asked me if I wouldn't like a New Testament, and I said, 'Yuss, I would,' and she give me one; and I told her that I was converted, not when I was born, but when I was confirmed in St. George's Church; and the bishop gave us a beautiful address he did, and I felt werry much better when he laid his hands on my head, and after he give us the blessin'. If my hands wasn't so black, I'd show you the cards and things. I've kep 'em ever since--yuss. I've still got 'The Vow Performed,' or whatever it is called. The wicked woman downstairs, she hasn't taken _that_. Oh, a wicked woman she is, a _very_ wicked woman; but I'll have the law on her. Ah!" * * * * * I ask her if--what with the cat and the woman downstairs, and all her relatives in heaven--she does not sometimes sigh for the next world. "I'll be ready when my time comes," she replies confidently, and with rather a sly grin, "but I'm werry well content to stay where I am till I'm called, I am. I don't complain of nothink, I don't, excep' this beastly winder-pane which lets the draught in somethink cruel, it does, enough it is to blow me out of bed; and that awful devil of a woman downstairs; and the crossin' at the Elephant and Castle, which tries my nerves dreadful it does, and oughter be put a stop to, for it ain't safe for nobody, let alone a cripple. Then there's the children," she cries fiercely. "Oh, they are dreadful! You never heard sich language. Foul-mouthed!--oh, it's awful; I never did in all my life hear sich disgustin' language. And they tease me dreadful, they do, and call after me, and follow me into shops, and throw muck at me, the dirty little blasphemin' devils."