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"Where's our mother?" asked little Ruth.

"In there," and Mrs. Ades jerked her shoulder towards the bedroom door.

"Then where's she gone if she's back in there?"

"'Tis her sperrit that's gone—her body's in her bed, all laid out and decent and präaper, as I should like you all to see when you've eaten your supper."

"Is thur a new babby in thur?" whispered Tamar.

"Surelye, poor liddle soul; we laid it on her arm."

"Is it dead too?"

"It's dead, my dear—if you can call it dead wot never breathed."

The children were silent, but they thought of many things as they gobbled up the steaming, savoury stew. Susan felt glad that the baby was dead. If it had been alive, how should they have fed it? It would have been like one of those socklambs, which are brought up in farm-house kitchens, and are a great care and nuisance to everybody, because they have to be kept warm and fed out of a bottle. The baby would have been very troublesome to rear—besides, they already had enough . . . too many, in fact, when she thought of the three little ones at Mrs. Coven's. Suppose they had been here tonight, demanding their portions of stew. . . . Suppose their mother had been here to-night, with that hungry look in her eyes, shovelling bacon and pease into her wide, hungry mouth, which seemed as if it could fill itself twice as fast and twice as full as anybody else's. In a sudden pang Susan thought at once of the mercy of her mother's absence from the feast and of the pity of her having missed what she would have enjoyed so much.