“Thank you, Aunt Church.  I do feel obliged for your kind opinion of me.  But now, are you going to help Miss Kathleen, or are you not?  She can’t have the girls—­the Wild Irish Girls, I mean—­any longer at the quarry, for it’s getting noised abroad in the school, and there are those who’d think very little of telling on us; and then we might all be expelled, for it’s contrary to the rules of the governors that there should be anything underhand or anything of that sort in the place.  So it is this way:  we have got into trouble, we Wild Irish Girls, and dear Miss Kathleen is determined that, come what will, the society must not suffer; and she thinks you could help.  And if you help in any sort of fashion, why, she’ll take precious good care that you get into one of those little almshouses.  She said I was to see you to-day, and I was to take her back the answer.  And now, will you help or will you not?”

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Church.

When she had uttered these words she sank back in her chair.  Her knitting was forgotten; her old face looked pale with anxiety.

“Have a cup of tea; it will help you to think more than anything,” said Susy, and in a brisk and businesslike fashion she dived into the cupboard, took out the cups and saucers, a little box of biscuits, a tiny jug of milk, a caddy of tea, and proceeded to fill the little teapot.  By-and-by tea was ready, and Susy brought a cup to the old lady.

“There, now,” she said.  “You see what it means to have a nice little girl like me to wait on you.  You’d have taken an hour hobbling round all by yourself.  Now what will you do?”

“What shall I do?” said Mrs. Church.  “Look round, Susan Hopkins, and ask me what I am to do!  How many of those forty can be squeezed into this room?”

“Let me think,” said Susy.

She looked round the room, which was really not more than twelve feet square.

“We couldn’t get many in here,” she said.  “Four might stand against the wall there, and four there, and so on, but that wouldn’t go far when there are forty.  We must have the backyard.”

“What! and upset the pig?” said Mrs. Church.

“Oh, Aunt Church, you really can’t think of Brownie at a moment like this!  They must all congregate in the yard, and you shall look on.  Oh, you’ll enjoy it fine!  But you ought to have tea for Miss O’Hara and Miss Katie O’Flynn; you really ought.  Think, Aunt Church; it is quite worth while when you have an almshouse in view; and you know that for all the rest of your life you are to have a house rent-free, coal and light, and six shillings a week.”

“It’s worth an effort,” said Mrs. Church; “it is that.  But I doubt me, now that the thing seems so near, whether I shall like the crossing.  I can’t abide finding myself on the salty sea.  I have that to think over, and that is against the scheme, Susy Hopkins.”

“And what do a few hours’ misery signify,” said Susy, “when you have all the rest of your life to live in clover?”