S The Real Charlotte, 



Kidderminster carpet to the illuminated text that was pinned 

 to the wall facing the bed. 



Miss Charlotte gave the fire a frugal poke, and lit a 

 candle in the flame provoked from the sulky coals. In 

 doing so some ashes became embedded in the grease, and 

 taking a hair-pin from the ponderous mass of brown hair 

 that was piled on the back of her head, she began to scrape 

 the candle clean. Probably at no moment of her forty 

 years of life had Miss Charlotte Mullen looked more 

 startlingly plain than now, as she stood, her squat figure 

 draped in a magenta flannel dressing-gown, and the candle 

 light shining upon her face. The night of watching had 

 left its traces upon even her opaque skin. The lines about 

 her prominent mouth and chin were deeper than usual ; her 

 broad cheeks had a flabby pallor ; only her eyes were bright 

 and untired, and the thick yellow-white hand that manipu- 

 lated the hair-pin was as deft as it was wont to be. 



When the flame burned clearly she took the candle to 

 the bedside, and, bending down, held it close to the face of 

 the old woman who was lying there. The eyes opened and 

 turned towards the overhanging face : small, dim, blue 

 eyes, full of the stupor of illness, looking out of the patheti- 

 cally commonplace little old face with a far-away perplexity. 



" Was that Francie that was at the door ? " she said in a 

 drowsy voice that had in it the lagging drawl of intense 

 weakness. 



Charlotte took the tiny wrist in her hand, and felt the 

 pulse with professional attention. Her broad, perceptive 

 finger-tips gauged the forces of the little thread that was 

 jerking in the thin network of tendons, and as she laid the 

 hand down she said to herself, " She'll not last out the turn 

 of the night." 



" Why doesn't Francie come in ? " murmured the old 

 woman again in the fragmentary, uninflected voice that 

 seems hardly spared from the unseen battle with death. 



^' It wasn't her you asked me for at all," answered 

 Charlotte. "You said you wanted to say good-bye to 

 Susan. Here, you'd better have a sip of this." 



The old woman swallowed some brandy and water, and 

 the stimulant pre^^ently revived unexpected strength in her. 



"Charlotte," she said, "it isn't cats we should be think 



