"
The shopwoman raised her eyes, sighed, and inquired sympathetically if
this was the young lady's first confinement.
Mrs. Saunders nodded and sighed, and then the shopwoman asked Mrs.
Saunders if she required any baby clothes. Mrs. Saunders said she had all
she required. The parcel was made up, and they were preparing to leave,
when Esther said--
"I may as well buy the material and make another set--it will give me
something to do in the afternoons. I think I should like to make them."
We have some first-rate longcloth at sixpence-half-penny a yard."
"You might take three yards, Esther; if anything should happen to yer
bairn it will always come in useful. And you had better take three yards
of flannel. How much is yer flannel?"
"We have some excellent flannel," said the woman, lifting down a long,
heavy package in dull yellow paper; "this is ten-pence a yard. You will
want a finer longcloth for the little shirts."
And every afternoon Esther sat in the parlour by the window, seeing, when
she raised her eyes from the sewing, the low brick street full of
children, and hearing the working women calling from the open doors or
windows; and as she worked at the baby clothes, never perhaps to be worn,
her heart sank at the long prospect that awaited her, the end of which she
could not see, for it seemed to reach to the very end of her life.
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