“Shove it in t’ cupboard agen, will you?” she finished brokenly, turning her eyes from it at last, and Mrs. Tanner, weeping herself for the child who would sit in the little chair no more, shut it away in its dark sanctuary, as the child, too, would be shut away.... The bursts of grief were growing shorter, however, as Nature accepted her bitter toll. The poor mother sat quietly enough while Mrs. Tanner propped her leg with a tub, eased the strain with a cushion, and wound a wet compress about her knee; quietly, too, told her where to find pen and ink, post-card and penny stamp. The post-card happened to show a picture of the parish church, and, forgetting her trouble, she brightened sharply. “Yon’s where she was wed,” she began briskly; “ay, send her that——” and then bit her lip with a deep sigh, and fell again to rubbing the black gown.... Mrs. Tanner set a fire in the cold grate, put on the kettle, and began to prepare supper. “You’ll not sleep if you don’t have summat to eat,” the little woman said, as she flitted about, “and it’ll be a bad job if you don’t sleep. You’d best have a warm bottle in your bed an’ all. I’ll see about begging yon grand rubber one of hers from Mrs. James. And me or Mrs. Airey or Mrs. Dunn’ll stop the night with you, if you want. I don’t know as it’d be right, anyway, to go leaving you alone.” Mrs. Clapham said again “You’re right kind—you are that,” in the same dull tone which was such a mockery of the one that had stood for ecstasy and beatification. She sat so still that she did not even turn her eyes as Mrs. Tanner flew to and fro, darting out into the road after her passing Joe, and yet again to signal to Mrs. James and to return armed with the rubber bottle. There was scarcely anybody else whom the stricken woman would not have resented at this particular moment, but it was quite impossible to resent Mrs. Tanner. Always, as she nipped in and out, quick and cheerful, yet never loud, she had the quaint, delicate charm of a hopping and flitting bird. All the time as she worked she kept up a shower of twitters and chirps—“Eh, but our Joe is ter’ble put about on your account, Ann Clapham!” and “My Joe says they’re all crying their eyes out about Tibbie down at the ‘Red Cow’”—but Mrs. Clapham scarcely answered. In her state of misery and exhaustion the kindly sympathy hardly reached her. It did not seem possible that she could get to Tibbie to-morrow. Every bone in her seemed to ache, every muscle and every nerve; while the ache of her heart in the midst seemed to swallow up all the rest, yet continually sent out to them fresh weariness and fresh pain....