"Industrious indeed!" muttered the matron. "If you had been industrious and careful, you wouldn't have found your way here. No, there is no work for you, as far as I can see. Some of the able-bodied women do out the old women's ward; it would never do to trust it to an incapable like yourself. There, I can't waste any more time with you."
The matron hurried away, and Grannie went back to her seat by the fire, in the company of the other old women. They were curious to know what the doctor had said to her, and when she told them they shook their heads and groaned, and said they all knew that would be the case.
"No one hadvanced in life gets better here," said Mrs. Peters; "and you are hadvanced in life, aint you, ma'am?"
"Not so very," replied Grannie indignantly. She felt quite young beside most of the other old paupers.
"Well now, I calc'late you're close on eighty," said Mrs. Peters.
"Indeed, you are mistook," replied Grannie. "I aint seventy yet. I'm jest at the age when it is no expense at all to live, so to speak. I were sixty-eight last November, and no one can call that old. At least not to say very old."
"You look seventy-eight at the very least," said most of the women. They nodded and gave Grannie some solemn, queer glances. They all saw a change in her which she did not know anything about herself. She had aged quite ten years since yesterday.
The one variety in the old women's lives was their meals. Dinner came at half-past twelve, and supper at six. All the huge old family went up to bed sharp at eight. There could not possibly be a more dreary life than theirs. As the days passed on, Grannie recovered from her first sense of chill and misery, and a certain portion of her brave spirit returned. It was one of the rules of the workhouse that the pauper women of over sixty might go out every Sunday from half-past twelve to six. They might also go out for the same number of hours on Thursday. Those who were in sufficiently good health always availed themselves of this outing, and Grannie herself looked forward quite eagerly to Sunday. She scarcely slept on Saturday night for thinking of this time of freedom. She had obtained permission to wear her own neat dress, and she put it on with untold pride and satisfaction on this Sunday morning. Once again some of the spirit of the Simpsons and Phippses came into her. She left the workhouse quite gayly.
"I feel young again," she murmured to herself as she heard the ugly gates clang behind her.
She walked down the road briskly, took an omnibus, and by and by found herself at Bayswater. She had asked Alison to wait in for her, telling the girl that she might be able to pay her a little visit on Sunday. When she rang, therefore, the servants' bell at Mrs. Faulkner's beautiful house, Alison herself opened the door.