When the nether regions were illumined and the door thrown open, Lilian beheld a familiar figure, that of a scraggy and wretchedly clad woman with a moaning infant in her arms.
"Oh, it's you, Mrs.Wilson!" she exclaimed.

"Please to come in.

How have _you_ been getting on?
And how is baby ?" The woman took a seat by the kitchen fire, and began to talk in a whining, mendicant tone.

From the conversation it appeared that this was by no means the first time she had visited Lilian and sought to arouse her compassion; the stories she poured forth consisted in a great measure of excuses for not having profited more substantially by the help already given her.

The eye and the ear of experience would readily enough have perceived in Mrs.Wilson a very coarse type of impostor, and even Lilian, though showing a face of distress at what she heard, seemed to hesitate in her replies and to entertain troublesome doubts.