The women were about her at once, calling out and asking her how she had done it, all in a breath; while she, gasping out anxious requests to be left alone, laughed at their futile efforts to raise her, even while tears of pain poured steadily down her face. They desisted at last, standing back in dismay, and a passing butcher, nimbly stopping his cart in its descent of the hill, left his accustomed horse to look after itself, and came to offer a helping hand. “Nay, let me be, can’t you?” Mrs. Clapham protested, still laughing and crying. “It’s queer to me how folks can’t never let a tummelled body lie. They must always be heaving them up again, same as a sheep or a sack o’ coals!... I’ve got a bit of a shake, of course,” she informed them presently, “and I’ve twisted my bad knee; but I’ll be as right as a bobbin if only you’ll let me be.” “You should look where you’re going, at your age, mother!” the butcher chaffed her, arms akimbo in his blue coat. “Doesn’t do to go backing down steps like a ballet-girl at your time of life, you know!” “I’ll give you ballet-girl when I’m on my feet again—see if I don’t!” Mrs. Clapham gasped, chuckling through her tears, though somehow the teasing words made her feel terribly old. “Eh, but it was a daft thing to do, and a daft sight I must look; and, eh, losh save us, what’s come to yon key!” The staring women sprang to attention at once, and, with the help of the butcher, began a search. It was Mrs. Bell who finally pounced on it where it lay, flown from the charwoman’s hand in the track of the butcher’s wheels. “Happen you’ll agree now as it’s safest with me!” she demanded grimly, and pocketed it as the other nodded.... “Ay, I can’t say I seem fit to be trusted with it at present!” Mrs. Clapham agreed, though with an inward sigh, and feeling as if, with the loss of the key, something vital had been taken from her. “Now I’ll be getting up again, if you’ll lend me a hand.” Crowding round her again, they hoisted her to her feet, amid fresh gaspings and chucklings and injunctions to “let be!” “You’d best let me give you a lift back,” the butcher suggested, seeing that she was lame, and after more pulling and pushing she was presently seated by his side. Almost at once they had slipped away down the hill, with the houses behind them rising higher and higher. It was almost as if they were being lifted into the air, actual mansions of the blest returning rapidly into the sky. The rapping hoofs of the horse were fast dropping the charwoman into the mist in which the village was drowned, and suddenly it was over her head, and the almshouses were out of sight. The world that she knew came up about her on every side, while the world in which she had dreamed through the afternoon was gone as if it had never been....