"Do you want to walk?" Edward asked.
"I've got to, sir," she said.
"Do you mind," he asked, "telling me why you want to go?"
"I've got relations there, sir," said the woman in black, raising to his the plaintive blue eyes of a child set in a face that fifty years and more had wrinkled like a February apple. "My husband's relations, that is. They might do something to help me. I might be able to be of use to them, just to work out my keep. It isn't much I require. But I couldn't—"
She stopped, and Edward Basingstoke knew that she couldn't even bring herself to name the great terror of the poor—the living tomb which the English call the workhouse.
"I'm afraid you've had a hard time," said Mr. Basingstoke.
"I had many happy days," she said, simply. "I always think you pay for everything you have, sooner or later. And I'm paying now. I don't grudge it, but I'd like to end respectable. And thank you for asking so kindly, sir, and now I'll be getting on." And he saw in her eyes the fear that he would offer her money to pay her way to Droitwich.
Instead he said: "We're motoring your way this afternoon. If you'll let us give you a lift—"
The woman looked from one to the other. "Well," she said, "I do call that kind. But I wasn't asking for any help. And I'd best be getting on."
Then the other woman came quite close to the woman in black. "Won't you," she said, "come and have dinner with us—and then we'll drive you over? Do come. We're so happy and we do hate to think that you aren't. Perhaps we can think of some way to help you . . . find you some work or something," she added, hastily, answering the protest in the blue eyes.