“It's against our rules,” said the Sister, eying the money. “If you like to give it as a subscription to the general funds, I will accept it.” “Are you badly off?” asked John. “We are very slenderly endowed.” John pushed the note across the small table near which they were sitting. “In return,” said he, “I hope you will allow me to send in some jellies and fruits, or appliances, or whatever may be of pleasure or comfort to the child.” “Whatever you send her that is practical shall be applied to her use,” said the Sister superintendent. She was cold, unemotional; no smile, no ghost even of departed smiles, seemed ever to visit the tired, gray eyes or the corners of the rigid mouth; coif and face and thin hands were spotless. She did not even thank him for his forced gift to the orphanage. “I should like to know,” said John, regarding her beneath frowning brows, “whether any one here loves the unhappy little wretch.” “These children,” replied the Sister superintendent, “have naturally a hard battle to fight when they go from here into the world. They come mostly from vicious classes. Their training is uniformly kind, but it has to be austere.” John rose. “I will bring what things I can think of to-morrow.” The Sister superintendent rose, too, and bowed icily. “You are at liberty to do so, Mr. Risca; but I assure you there is no reason for your putting yourself to the trouble. In the circumstances I can readily understand your solicitude; but again I say you have no cause for it.” “Madam,” said he, “I see that I have more cause than ever.” The next day he drove to the orphanage in a cab, with a hamper of delicacies and a down pillow. The latter the Sister superintendent rejected. Generally, it was against the regulations and, particularly, it was injudicious. Down pillows would not be a factor in Unity Blake's after-life. “Besides,” she remarked, “she is not the only orphan in the infirmary.” “Why not call it a sick-room or sick-ward instead of that prison term?” asked John. “It's the name given to it by the governing body,” she replied. After this John became a regular visitor. Every time he kicked his heels for ten minutes in the shabby and depressing parlour and every time he was received with glacial politeness by the Sister superintendent. By blunt questioning he learned the history of the institution. The Sisterhood of Saint Martha was an Angelican body with headquarters in Kent, which existed for meditation and not for philanthropic purposes. The creation and conduct of the orphanage had been thrust upon the sisterhood by the will of a member long since deceased. It was unpopular with the sisterhood, who resented it as an excrescence, but bore it as an affliction decreed by divine Providence. Among the cloistered inmates of the Kentish manor-house there was no fanatical impulse towards Willesden.