Pattie remembered to this day the very saucepan she was washing when she realized that _this_ was the answer to her prayer, that her poor mother had been saved from herself, and taken to a place where she would be cared for, and kept from the terrible snare of drink. "And now," Tom had said when she told him, "we must teach her about the love of Jesus." So month after month since then, Tom had gone regularly to the Infirmary and read the gospel's message to Pattie's mother, for she was still there and never likely to come out, and the poor woman had come to look for him and to love him as her own son. Pattie wondered sometimes whether he still went, but on the one occasion that she had seen her mother since she gave Tom up, she had been too proud to ask. Pattie never saw a woman come out of a public-house without an involuntary shiver at her heart, and now here, before her very eyes, came Tom's own sister, Jim Adams's wife! Pattie recognised her in an instant, and she recognised Pattie, and though Pattie would only too willingly have passed on, Jane stood in her path and barred the way. "Well! Pattie Paul," said she insolently. "I want to know what you mean by it." "I don't know what _you_ mean," said Pattie, trying to pass her, but Jane dodged her. "Oh don't you?" she cried. "What do you mean by using my brother like you have, letting him dangle after you, and pretending you was going to marry him, and getting presents out of him?" Pattie's face flamed. "It's not true!" she said hotly. "I never got presents out of him, and I always meant to marry him----" Jane sneered. "Very likely!" she said, "he did well enough to play with, till a richer chap came along, and then you remembered Tom was poor! You're a mean thing, Pattie Paul!" "Let me pass!" cried Pattie vehemently, "you've no right to say such things!" "No right!" flared Jane, "and me seeing my own brother going thin and a-fretting for a worthless girl like you! No right!" But Pattie stayed to hear no more. With a sudden turn of the mail-cart, she was past her enemy, and running swiftly down the pavement towards St. Olave's, while little Maud laughed and clapped her hands with delight; she thought the run was all to amuse her. And Tom was going thin and fretting! In the midst of her pride, anger and humiliation, that thought came back to Pattie over and over again. But the anger and the pride predominated, and swept away all tenderer feelings, and she met Sam Willard in the evening with a laugh and a toss of the head, and wished that Jane were there to see. CHAPTER XI. WITH A PURPOSE. When Gertrude made up her mind to seek out a marriage-portion for herself, whose chief ingredient should be money, with love as a secondary consideration, she set herself with her usual cool forethought to consider the matter of Reggie Alston.