Of course she was still jealous of Mrs Moseley. She couldn’t help being jealous; but though she denied this indignantly, and even tried to prove her goodwill by paying several awkward visits with the baby to Mrs Moseley’s bedroom, she knew very well that the old woman’s attractions for Abner were the very least that she had to fear. She was really and deeply jealous of the young women who stared at him on the football field or in the Stourton Road. She knew how handsome he was growing; realised, with an agony that was not wholly maternal, that sooner or later he was bound to fall in love, and that was a calamity which somehow she felt she could not bear. Little by little John Fellows was becoming less important to her. All her life seemed more and more centred in her baby and in Abner. Thinking the matter over she decided that it was her best policy to encourage him in his friendship for the old woman, and she did so gradually, insidiously, so that Abner should not guess what she was doing or wonder why she was doing it. Abner needed no encouragement. He had never wavered from his loyalty, and now more than ever he felt that he owed some attention to his old friend. Since the day when she had taken to her bed after the fortnight’s work at Hackett’s Cottages, she had never recovered sufficiently to resume her former activities. Sometimes, indeed, it had seemed that her leg was on the point of healing; but as soon as she crawled downstairs and tried to go about her business it broke down again, which was not surprising seeing how much her lying in bed had weakened her. The doctor could do nothing but preach patience and leave her in the hands of the district nurse. For a whole year she struggled along on the pittance that the relieving officer gave her; but at last the disorder of the cottage became so overwhelming that the nurse took the law into her own hands and, in spite of all Mrs Moseley’s protests, wrote a letter to the nearest of the old woman’s relatives, a younger sister, the wife of a North Bromwich brass-worker named Wade. In answer to the letter Mrs Wade came over to see her sister, dressed as for a funeral in closely-fitting black sateen. Being rather afraid that she might find it awkward to get out of taking Mrs Moseley home with her, the sight of the old woman’s helplessness gave her a distinct feeling of relief which showed itself in the warmth of her condolences. ‘Well, Eliza, this is a shame, isn’t it? And my! won’t George be shocked when I tell him? To think of your never ’aving let us know! Just to think of it!’ Mrs Moseley feebly protested that it wasn’t her fault that the Wades had been told even now. ‘I don’t want to be a trouble to people,’ she said. Mrs Wade assured her that she wasn’t anything of the kind.