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 very upright on her chair. "I am sure she is a very good lady."

"One of those noble narrow women, Mrs. Brown, upon whom life bears down so heavily. Yet she carries out her programme with a greatness of spirit which is almost demoralizing to one who tries to look at things as they are. I don't know what there is in her life that carries her on so victoriously; for one never hears her utter a complaint against the buffets she has received from fate, or against the restrictions that her dismal surroundings impose on her nature. I have never heard an impatient word upon her lips, yet every morning, summer and winter, she rises at the hour of five, performs those domestic functions that can bring no satisfaction to her, and presently goes forth to labors still more arduous and equally devoid of meaning. What there is to carry her on I don't know. Why that inflexible spirit has not been broken these many years I cannot conjecture."

"She has got into the habit of going on, sir, I suppose," said the charwoman.

"The habit must be a very strange one, Mrs. Brown, when to-morrow is always the same as yesterday."

"It is like being a clock, sir, which goes on because it has been wound up."

"Yes, but I never found a clock that could wind up itself. Every clock must have some kind of a key."

"It is God, sir, who is the key," said the charwoman.

"That throws us back," said Northcote, "to our original necessity to have a religion. To my mind,