Chapter 21

In the front window of one of the row of little flat-faced brick houses
on a narrow street in Manchester, Dowie sat holding Henrietta's new baby
upon her lap. They were what is known as "weekly" houses, their rent
being paid by the week and they were very small. There was a parlour
about the size of a compartment in a workbox, there was a still smaller
room behind it which was called a dining room and there was a diminutive
kitchen in which all the meals were eaten unless there was "company to
tea" which in these days was almost unknown. Dowie had felt it very
small when she first came to it from the fine spaces and heights of the
house in Eaton Square and found it seemingly full of very small children
and a hysterically weeping girl awaiting the impending arrival of one
who would be smaller than the rest.

"You'll never stay here," said Henrietta, crying and clutching the
untidy half-buttoned front of her blouse. "You come straight from
duchesses and grandeur and you don't know how people like us live. How
can you stand us and our dirt, Aunt Sarah Ann?"

"There needn't be dirt, Henrietta, my girl," said Dowie with quite
uncritical courage. "There wouldn't be if you were yourself, poor lass.
I'm not a duchess, you know. I've only been a respectable servant. And
I'm going to see you through your trouble."

Her sober, kindly capableness evolved from the slovenly little house and
the untended children, from the dusty rooms and neglected kitchen the
kind of order and neatness which had been plain to see in Robin's more
fortune-favoured apartment. The children became as fresh and neat as
Robin's nursery self. They wore clean pinafores and began to behave
tidily at table.

"I don't know how you do it, Aunt Sarah Ann," sighed Henrietta. But she
washed her blouse and put buttons on it.

"It's just seeing things and picking up and giving a touch here and
there," said Dowie. She bought little comforts almost every day and
Henrietta was cheered by cups of hot tea in the afternoon and found
herself helping to prepare decent meals and sitting down to them with
appetite before a clean tablecloth. She began to look better and
recovered her pleasure in sitting at the front window to watch the
people passing by and notice how many new black dresses and bonnets went
to church each Sunday.

When the new baby was born there was neither turmoil nor terror.

"Somehow it was different from the other times. It seemed sort of
natural," Henrietta said. "And it's so quiet to lie like this in a
comfortable clean bed, with everything in its place and nothing upset in
the room. And a bright bit of fire in the