Baby ceased to cry and began to smile. Seeing this the woman's eyes sparkled like sunshine.

"See that," she cried. "S'elp me Jesus, I b'lieve I could 'ave been good meself if I'd on'y 'ad somethink like this to keer for."

I am not ashamed to say that more than once there had been tears in my eyes while the woman spoke, though her blasphemies had corrupted the air like the gases that rise from a dust-heap. But when she touched my child I shuddered as if something out of the 'lowest depths had tainted her.

Then a strange thing happened.

I had risen to go, although my limbs could scarcely support me, and was folding my little angel closely in my arms, when the woman rose too and said:

"You wouldn't let me carry your kiddie a bit, would you?"

I tried to excuse myself, saying something, I know not what The woman looked at me again, and after a moment she said:

"S'pose not. On'y I thought it might make me think as 'ow I was carryin'

Billie."

That swept down everything.

The one remaining window of the woman's soul was open and I dared not close it.

I looked down at my child--so pure, so sweet, so stainless; I looked up at the woman--so foul, so gross, so degraded.

There was a moment of awful struggle and then ... the woman and I were walking side by side.

And the harlot was carrying my baby down the street.

NINETY-FOURTH CHAPTER

At five o'clock I was once more alone.

I was then standing (with baby in my own arms now) under the statue which is at the back of Bow Church.

I thought I could walk no farther, and although every penny I had in my pocket belonged to Isabel (being all that yet stood between her and want) I must borrow a little of it if she was to reach Mrs. Oliver's that night.

I waited for the first tram that was going in my direction, and when it came up I signalled to it, but it did not stop--it was full.

I waited for a second tram, but that was still more crowded.

I reproached myself for having come so far. I told myself how ill-advised I had been in seeking for a nurse for my child at the farthest end of the city. I reminded myself that I could not hope to visit her every day if my employment was to be in the West, as I had always thought it would be. I asked myself if in all this vast London, with its myriads of homes, there had been no house nearer that could have sheltered my child.

Against all this I had to set something, or I think my very heart would have died there and then. I set the thought of Ilford, on the edge of the country, with its green fields and its flowers. I set the thought of Mrs. Oliver, who would love my child as tenderly as if she were her own little lost one.

I dare say it was all very weak and childish, but it is just when we are done and down, and do not know what we are doing, that Providence seems to be directing us, and it was so with me at that moment.

The trams being full I had concluded that Fate had set itself against my spending any of Isabel's money, and had made up my mind to make a fierce fight over the last stage of my journey, when I saw that a little ahead of where I was standing the road divided into two branches at an acute angle, one branch going to the right and the other to the left.

Not all Emmerjane's instructions about keeping "as straight as a' arrow"

sufficed to show me which of the two roads to take and I looked about for somebody to tell me.

It was then that I became aware of a shabby old four-wheeled cab which stood in the triangular space in front of the statue, and of the driver (an old man, in a long coachman's coat, much worn and discoloured, and a dilapidated tall hat, very shiny in patches) looking at me while he took the nose-bag off his horse--a bony old thing with its head hanging down.

I stepped up to him and asked my way, and he pointed it out to me--to the right, over the bridge and through Stratford Market.

I asked how far it was to Ilford.

"Better nor two mile _I_ call it," he answered.

After that, being so tired in brain as well as body, I asked a foolish question--how long it would take me to get there.

The old driver looked at me again, and said:

"'Bout a 'our and a 'alf I should say by the looks of you--and you carryin' the biby."

I dare say my face dropped sadly as I turned away, feeling very tired, yet determined to struggle through. But hardly had I walked twenty paces when I heard the cab coming up behind and the old driver crying:

"'Old on, missie."

I stopped, and to my surprise he drew up by my side, got down from his box, opened the door of his cab and said:

"Ger in."

I told him I could not afford to ride.

"Ger in," he said again more loudly, and as if angry with himself for having to say it.

Again I made some demur, and then the old man said, speaking fiercely through his grizzly beard:

"Look 'ere, missie. I 'ave a gel o' my own lost somewheres, and I wouldn't be ans'rable to my ole woman if I let you walk with a face like that."

I don't know what I said to him. I only know that my tears gushed out and that at the next moment I was sitting in the cab.

What happened then I do not remember, except that the dull rumble of the wheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and that I saw through the mist before my eyes a sluggish river, a muddy canal, and patches of marshy fields.

I think my weariness and perhaps my emotion, added to the heavy monotonous trotting of the old horse, must have put me to sleep, for after a while I was conscious of a great deal of noise, and of the old driver twisting about and shouting in a cheerful voice through the open window at the back of his seat:

"Stratford Market."

After a while we came to a broad road, full of good houses, and then the old driver cried "Ilford," and asked what part of it I wished to go to.

I reached forward and told him, "10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's Green," and then sat back with a lighter heart.

But after another little while I saw a great many funeral cars passing us, with the hearses empty, as if returning from a cemetery. This made me think of the woman and her story, and I found myself unconsciously clasping my baby closer.

The corteges became so numerous at last that to shut out painful sights I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasanter things.