“The Poorhouse?” said the Secretary.

Mrs. Higden set that resolute old face of hers, and darkly nodded yes.

“You dislike the mention of it.”

“Dislike the mention of it?” answered the old woman. “Kill me sooner than take me there. Throw this pretty child under carthorses’ feet and a loaded wagon, sooner than take him there. Come to us and find us all a-dying, and set a light to us all where we lie and let us all blaze away with the house into a heap of cinders sooner than move a corpse of us there!”

A surprising spirit in this lonely woman after so many years of hard working, and hard living, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards! What is it that we call it in our grandiose speeches? British independence, rather perverted? Is that, or something like it, the ring of the cant?