Jean plodded on her well-doing way, and knocked her head against many posts, and blundered into pitfalls, and perhaps did more good and earned more real gratitude than she had any idea of.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m cheated ninety-nine times if I’m some real help the hundredth time,” she told herself.  “Puir thing,” said the recipients of her bounty, in kindly tolerance, “she means weel, and it’s a kindness to help her awa’ wi’ some o’ her siller.  A’ she gies us is juist like tippence frae you or me.”

One woman, at any rate, blessed Jean in her heart, though her stiff, ungracious lips could not utter a word of thanks.  Mary Abbot lived in a neat cottage surrounded by a neat garden.  She was a dressmaker in a small way, and had supported her mother till her death.  She had been very happy with her work and her bright, tidy house and her garden and her friends, but for more than a year a black fear had brooded over her.  Her sight, which was her living, was going.  She saw nothing before her but the workhouse.  Death she would have welcomed, but this was shame.  For months she had fought it out, as her eyes grew dimmer, letting no one know of the anxiety that gnawed at her heart.  No one suspected anything wrong.  She was always neatly dressed at church, she always had her small contribution ready for collectors, her house shone with rubbing, and as she did not seem to want to take in sewing now, people thought that she must have made a competency and did not need to work so hard.

Jean knew Miss Abbot well by sight.  She had sat behind her in church all the Sundays of her life, and had often admired the tidy appearance of the dressmaker, and thought that she was an excellent advertisement of her own wares.  Lately she had noticed her thin and ill-coloured, and Mrs. Macdonald had said one day, “I wonder if Miss Abbot is all right.  She used to be such a help at the sewing meeting, and now she doesn’t come at all, and her excuses are lame.  When I go to see her she always says she is perfectly well, but I am not at ease about her.  She’s the sort of woman who would drop before she made a word of complaint....”

One morning when passing the door Jean saw Miss Abbot polishing her brass knocker.  She stopped to say good morning.

“Are you keeping well, Miss Abbot?  There is so much illness about.”

“I’m in my usual, thank you,” said Miss Abbot stiffly.

“I always admire the flowers in your window,” said Jean.  “How do you manage to keep them so fresh looking?  Ours get so mangy.  May I come in for a second and look at them?”

Miss Abbot stood aside and said coldly that Jean might come in if she liked, but her flowers were nothing extra.

It was the tidiest of kitchens she entered.  Everything shone that could be made to shine.  A hearthrug made by Miss Abbot’s mother lay before the fireplace, in which a mere handful of fire was burning.  An arm-chair with cheerful red cushions stood beside the fire.  It was quite comfortable, but Jean felt a bareness.  There were no pots on the fire—­nothing seemed to be cooking for dinner.