Janet handed her the tea.
"Thank you, me darlin'," said the old woman. "I'm feeling better already. That's a beautiful locket you're wearing—it is the very image of one that belonged to me poor little Clara that died."
The old woman began to cry. Janet was greatly distressed. "I can't help it," said the old woman. "Me poor little Clara! I kept it for years and years, and then it was taken from me by my landlady's son, a good-for-nothing blackguard, in lodgings off the Pentonville Road." She sobbed afresh. "I've never been happy since," she said.
"Oh," Janet exclaimed, "do take this. I don't want it, I'm sure, if it would make you happy."
"But it's robbing you of it I am," said the old woman, as her hand closed on it.
"I'd much rather you had it," Janet replied.
"Heaven bless your kind heart!" said the old woman.
They jogged on, and she continued to look around her and to ask questions. She asked all about Janet's home and parents.
"Could you," she said at last, "lend me a shilling, my dear? It's to buy the little baby some mittens, his poor hands get that cold. I don't want you to give it, but couldn't you lend it me only for to-day? I'll post you a beautiful postal order to-night, which my daughter's husband will get for me, or a beautiful row of stamps, if you'll give me the address of the grand house you'll be staying in at Stratford."
But Janet was firm; she had promised Kink.