“What became of Lillie when she lost her place?” I got up from the sofa and came closer to the fire.  My teeth were chattering.

“She lost her soul.  She went in a factory, but the air made her sick, and after three faints they turned her off.  It interrupted the work and made the girls lose time running to her, and so she had to go.  After a while—­I was away at the time—­the woman she lived with turned her out.  She owed room rent, a good deal of it, and she needed food and clothes, and there was no money with which to buy them.  It got her crazy, the thought that because she had done wrong she was but a rag to be kicked from place to place with only the gutter to land in at last, and—­well, she landed.  But she isn’t all bad.  I used to feel about girls like her just as most good people still feel, but I’ve come to see there’s many of them who are more sinned against than sinning.  The men who make and keep them what they are go free and are let alone.”

“Couldn’t she have gone home?  You said she was from the country.  Wouldn’t they let her come back home?”

Mrs. Mundy shook her head.  “Her own mother was dead and her stepmother wouldn’t let her come.  She had young children of her own.  Last month she tried to end it all.  She won’t be here much longer.  The doctor says she’ll hardly live six months.  If we can get her in the City Home—­”

“The City Home!” The memory of what I had seen there came over me protestingly.  The girl had lived in hell.  She need not die in it.  “Perhaps she can be sent somewhere in the country,” I said, after a while.  “Mr. Guard might know of some one who will take her.  Certainly she can stay here until—­until he knows what is best to do.”

Mrs. Mundy got up.  For a moment she looked at me, started to say something, then went out of the room.  She was crying.  I wonder if I said anything I shouldn’t.

“Tell me of your mother’s garden.”  I picked up the tiny flower and put it on Lillie’s cot, where its fragrance waked faint stirrings of other days.  “I’ve always wanted a garden like my grandmother Heath used to have.  I remember it very well, though I was only nine when she died.  There were cherry-trees and fig-trees in it, and a big arbor covered with scuppernong grape-vines, and wonderful strawberries in one corner.  All of her flowers were the old-fashioned kind.  There was a beautiful yellow rose that grew all over the fence which separated the flowers from the vegetables, and close to the wood-house was a big moss-rose bush.  There were Micrafella roses, too.  I loved them best, and Jacqueminots, and tea-roses, and—­”