were almost always some young birds to feed
and rear, while boys would go bird-nesting, as
boys do everywhere. The first strangers who
came to that part of the coast for sea-bathing
used to stare at the child whom they met
walking with a bird perched on her head, and
another on her shoulder. If there was a crab
that was thrown out by the fishermen because
it had lost a claw, Jane would make a pool
for it in the sands, and watch over it till she
saw whether it could shift for itself. She was
no favourite with the shepherds on the down;
for they lost many a wheatear in August by
her letting the birds out of their traps. She
was told that it was wrong to do so, and she
believed it; but still she never could see the
bit of stick and horsehair, and the hole in the
turf, without peeping to look if a poor bird
was within; and if there was one not strangled,
she could not possibly help setting it free.
She got many a scolding, and not a few blows,
before she learned that other people who
take wheatears out of traps leave a penny
or a halfpenny in the trap. After that, every
halfpenny she had, went that way; and when
she had no more coppers, she would leave a
few cherries, or an apple, or a bit of gingerbread
- any treasure she happened to have;
and then she was exceedingly surprised when
the trapper knew who had been there. The
shepherds treated her more respectfully after
a certain day, when something happened that
frightened the child a good deal. She was
sitting on the down, making a daisy-chain for
her doll's neck, when some dogs came scouring
up the slope. They were in pursuit of a
leveret; and the leveret, hard-pressed, jumped
into the child's lap. Instantly she covered it
with her frock, and sprang to her feet. The
dogs leaped about her, and made an alarming
noise; and when the farmer to whom the
dogs belonged came up, he found her hugging
the leveret close, but very red in the face, and
half crying. Some shepherds near told the
story everywhere; and many were found to
agree that there must be something strange
about the child, that a wild animal should
take refuge in her lap, and that the dogs
should not pull her down. When the bad
weather came on, and the winds were too high
for the downs, there was always somebody's
lame foot or aching head to nurse in her lap.
And then came the shipwrecks, when there
were only too many wet and cold, and hungry,
and wretched people for her to try to warm
and comfort.

Perhaps the greatest event of her whole
childhood was the arrival in the next town of
a menagerie of wild beasts. When her father
took her to see it, he was little aware what
he was doing. There was a young lady,
dressed very grandly, with a little wand in
her hand, who went into the lion's cage, and
then into the tigers', and played with the
creatures, and came out safe. Little Jane
longed to go too, but she did not venture to
ask that. She only asked, and never ceased
for many months to entreat, that she might
be brought up to be a waiter in a menagerie.
When she was so laughed at that she dared
not say any more about it by day, she
muttered about it in her sleep. She had
glorious dreams about living with lions and
tigers, and playing with monkeys and parrots;
and she still hoped that her parents would
see that what another woman did, she might
do. Before the day arrived, however, for her
parents to reach her point of view, she had
changed her object. The neighbour whose
bad foot she had so often nursed, was obliged
to go at last to the county hospital; and there
Jane went with her mother one market-day.
Her soul was now really roused. She thought
no more of playing with lions and tigers, and
wearing embroidered trousers, and flourishing
a wand; she wanted to be a nurse in the
clean wards of an hospital. She asked endless,
questions on the spot about the ways of the
place. She set a chair for one tottering
patient; smoothed the pillow of another
who was restless; watched how others took
their physic, and thought she should like,
above everything, to spend her life in this
place.

Jane found, however, as most of us do, that,
after all our fine visions of doing grand things,
and things after our own fancy, the business
of our lives lies at home. When she was
sixteen—old enough to be ashamed of speaking
her wild wishes, but young enough to dream
of them still—her mother became so delicate
that it was impossible to think of leaving her;
and before her mother died, five years after, a
certain young carpenter, named Ewing,
occupied more of her thoughts than either
menagerie or hospital. In due time she
married Ewing; and, some years after, her
father died. Her brother lived in London.
So her husband and children made her home-
world; and the rest of her world was made
up of such sick and suffering neighbours as
she could help.

At forty years of age she was living in a
narrow lane of the town where she had seen
the menagerie. There were not even cheerful
houses opposite; but high warehouse walls,
without one single glazed window, but only
square spaces closed with dark shutters. By
peeping from the second-floor windows, the
ridge of a chalk cliff might be seen, with its
cap of grass, and a strip of sky above; but
otherwise, there was nothing visible but the
lane. The eldest boy, now fourteen, worked
with his father as a carpenter. The eldest
girl was eleven, and there were some younger
ones who, with the lodgers, gave mother and
daughter plenty to do. There were two rooms
let to lodgers—single men, who would be
out of the way all day at their work. The
rooms were never unlet long together; for
they were clean, and the bedding was good.

When the railway works were begun on
that part of the coast, there were plenty of
applicants for the Ewings' rooms. They