She went away with the pots into the back kitchen, and Mrs. Clapham, instead of sitting down again, began to wander about the room. She was still lame, of course, but the compress had eased her knee, and the stimulant of the tea had eased the ache of her tired bones. She stood for some time looking at Tibbie’s picture, and wept again as she looked, presently lifting a pitiful finger to the photographs of the children. Afterwards, staring about, she tried to imagine the house with the children in it, sitting or playing or running from room to room. Already their little coats and hats seemed to have taken their natural place on the bracket behind the door. She found herself wondering whether it would be possible to have the old chair mended for them, and then decided that it was too old. There were other things, too, that could no more be mended than the chair, things like the loss of youth and good health, and the terrible break of death. She was looking forward again now, patiently trying to believe that there was happiness still ahead, but there was no disguising the fact that it could be only second-hand happiness at the best. The pool of tea on the floor kept catching her eye as she stirred about, the stain of it on the flags offending her charwoman’s pride. It seemed to her it was the sort of thing you would expect in an old woman’s house, an idle old woman who had grown too ancient to care. Each time that she came across it she stopped to mutter and frown. For the time being she allowed Mrs. Tanner’s kindness to slip utterly out of her mind, choosing only to remember that she had forgotten the promised clout. There came a moment at last when she could bear it no longer, and, finding the back kitchen empty, she stealthily limped in. Presently she emerged with brush, pail and mat, and an expression of furtive excitement upon her face. Getting painfully on to her knees, she began to scrub, and almost at once found happiness coming back to her as if by magic. She was no longer afraid of life, now that she was at her job, nor of her own ability to cope with what the future might choose to send. Again, as in the morning, she turned instinctively to it for strength, and again found that it brought her courage, and that the touch of her tools brought her peace.