I want to keep my bit of a 'ome if I can, an' be free to come an' go.

I'm eighty-three, an' it won't be long.

I 'ad a shilling a week from the parish, but they stopped it because they said I ought to go into the 'Ouse.'" She looked at Betty with a momentarily anxious smile.
"P'raps you don't quite understand, miss," she said.

"It'll seem like nothin' to you--a place like this." "It doesn't," Betty answered, smiling bravely back into the old eyes, though she felt a slight fulness of the throat.

"I understand all about it." It is possible that old Mrs.Welden was a little taken aback by an attitude which, satisfactory to her own prejudices though it might be, was, taken in connection with fixed customs, a trifle unnatural.
"You don't mind me not wantin' to go ?" she said.
"No," was the answer, "not at all." Betty began to ask questions.