and I don’t like. Now, I seem to have Johnny in my arms — now, his mother — now, his mother’s mother — now, I seem to be a child myself, a lying once again in the arms of my own mother — then I get numbed, thought and senses, till I start out of my seat, afeerd that I’m a growing like the poor old people that they brick up in the Unions, as you may sometimes see when they let ’em out of the four walls to have a warm in the sun, crawling quite scared about the streets. I was a nimble girl, and have always been a active body, as I told your lady, first time ever I see her good face. I can still walk twenty mile if I am put to it. I’d far better be a walking than a getting numbed and dreary. I’m a good fair knitter, and can make many little things to sell. The loan from your lady and gentleman of twenty shillings to fit out a basket with, would be a fortune for me. Trudging round the country and tiring of myself out, I shall keep the deadness off, and get my own bread by my own labour. And what more can I want?”

“And this is your plan,” said the Secretary, “for running away?”

“Show me a better! My deary, show me a better! Why, I know very well,” said old Betty Higden, “and you know very well, that your lady and gentleman would set me up like a queen for the rest of my life, if so be that we could make it right among us to have it so. But we can’t make it right among us to have it so. I’ve never took charity yet, nor yet has any one belonging to me. And it would be forsaking of myself indeed, and forsaking of my children dead and gone, and forsaking of their children dead and gone, to set up a contradiction now at last.”

“It might come to be justifiable and unavoidable at last,” the Secretary gently hinted, with a slight stress on the word.

“I hope it never will! It ain’t that I mean to give offence by being anyways proud,” said the old creature simply, “but that I want to be of a piece like, and helpful of myself right through to my death.”

“And to be sure,” added the Secretary, as a comfort for her, “Sloppy will be eagerly looking forward to his opportunity of being to you what you have been to him.”

“Trust him for that, sir!” said Betty, cheerfully. “Though he had need to be something quick about it, for I’m a getting to be an old one. But I’m a strong one too, and travel and weather never hurt me yet! Now, be so kind as speak for me to your lady and gentleman, and tell ’em what I ask of their good friendliness to let me do, and why I ask it.”

The Secretary felt that there was no gainsaying what was urged by this brave old heroine, and he presently repaired to Mrs Boffin and recommended her to let Betty Higden have her way, at all events for the time. “It would be far more satisfactory to your kind heart, I know,” he said, “to provide for her, but it may be a duty to respect this independent spirit.” Mrs Boffin was not proof against the consideration set before her. She and her husband had worked too, and had brought their simple faith and honour clean out of dust-heaps. If they owed a duty to Betty Higden, of a surety that duty must be done.

“But, Betty,” said Mrs Boffin, when she accompanied John Rokesmith back to his room, and shone upon her with the light of her radiant face, “granted all else, I think I wouldn’t run away.”

“ ’Twould come easier to Sloppy,” said Mrs Higden, shaking her head. “ ’Twould come easier to me too. But ’tis as you please.”

“When would you go?”

“Now,” was the bright and ready answer. “To-day, my deary, to-morrow. Bless ye, I am used to it. I know many parts of the country well. When nothing else was to be done, I have worked in many a market- garden afore now, and in many a hop-garden too.”

“If I give my consent to your going, Betty — which Mr Rokesmith thinks I ought to do —”