"They'd a nice big fire," said Anne, "and until you came to look at the people, it looked quite comfortable. But when you came to look at those poor things, and thought that that was all they had to expect, it made your heart ache."
"She's a good matron I've heard," said Mrs Hankworth.
"She's a kind woman," returned Anne, heartily, "and I suppose it's a good thing they've got such a place to shelter them. But it seems a poor end somehow, and not a place for young people. There seems to be no hope in it, and yet it's clean, and they've got good food."
"Other people's bread doesn't taste like your own to them that's been used to having any," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I expect, if you've never had any of your own, you're glad to get anything. I suppose Burton's out of the country."
"Nobody seems to know rightly," said Anne. "Jane says not a word. I don't suppose she really knows anything."
"She'll come to see that she's better without him," said Mrs Hankworth, taking up the prints and working the butter emphatically. "But she must work like the rest of us. It's generally the long clothes that gets left over," she added, "the short ones get worn out by some of them, but I'll look and see what I can find. It'll be rather nice to be looking out baby-things again. There's nothing you miss more than a baby, when you've had one or other about for a good many years. But she'd never do any good with that Burton about."
It seemed not so much the fact that a girl would give up her reputation for a man, that impressed Mrs Hankworth unpleasantly, but that she would give it into the keeping of such a man. She did not expect impossible things of anybody. No one belonging to her had ever made a slip, and such a happening seemed to be so remote a possibility for anyone "connected," that she could spare great charity for the rest of the world. Nor did she believe in "driving people." If a girl had made a mistake, that was no reason why everyone else should make another, and her good sense revolted against a perpetually drawn-out punishment for any fault. Her disgust at this fault, not very deep, being submerged almost as it arose, by the immediate necessity for doing something, and a reminiscent understanding of the timidity and dread with which the first child-bearing might be regarded by an ignorant and forsaken girl. Her position as the reputable and capable mother of a family being unassailable, no one could consider that kindness to the girl implied any countenancing of her offence. Anne, puzzled and baffled by the things which she had seen, felt herself in a larger sphere which could consider the fact of birth as a small matter for everyday occurrence and preparation, happen however it might.
"You can't do anything by worrying, Miss Hilton, you know," said Mrs Hankworth. "You've got to wait. There's nothing anybody can do but wait. There's our John. I think he gets more nervous every child we have. I always say to him that he can't help anything by worrying, and in any case I'm the person who's got to go through it; but it makes no difference. He can't be satisfied till he sees me walking about again. The girl'll be quite right when she's got the baby to work for. She's nothing to do now but wait and think about it and herself. You'll see when she's up and about again she'll be another thing. I hope the baby's a boy. It'll be sooner forgotten about if he is."
"I'm afraid," said Anne, growing expansive beneath the good sense which attacked every practical side of the matter, and dissolved difficulties as soon as they arose, "that she'll get little work to do when she comes out. People talk unkindly, and say that you must make a difference between her and other girls."
"Oh! there'll always be some clever folk like that," said Mrs Hankworth, drily. "The difference that anyone can see if they use their eyes is, that she'll have a child to keep and they won't. She's no idea where she'll go, I suppose?"