"I can't help it," said the old woman.

"Me poor little Clara! I kept it for years and years, and then it was taken from me by my landlady's son, a good-for-nothing blackguard, in lodgings off the Pentonville Road." She sobbed afresh.

"I've never been happy since," she said.
"Oh," Janet exclaimed, "do take this.

I don't want it, I'm sure, if it would make you happy." "But it's robbing you of it I am," said the old woman, as her hand closed on it.
"I'd much rather you had it," Janet replied.
"Heaven bless your kind heart!" said the old woman.
They jogged on, and she continued to look around her and to ask questions.

She asked all about Janet's home and parents.
"Could you," she said at last, "lend me a shilling, my dear?
It's to buy the little baby some mittens, his poor hands get that cold.