better baby clothes than she had ever had before. The materials, bought at wholesale, are furnished at cost price, the entire layette at 10s. to be paid for by a deposit of 6d. a week.
As time went on, Mrs. Smith's headaches became more severe. Carrying water and coal upstairs greatly aggravated the heart trouble she had had since Jimmie's birth. Suddenly dizzy one day, she nearly fell from a chair on which she was standing to wash the windows. The next morning her feet were so swollen she could with difficulty get on her shoes. Her neighbour on the lower landing remarked, "Of course, you'll have to be worse before you're better." And she herself knew no other way.
But the ante-natal clinic did. The doctor wrote kidney trouble on her attendance card. That, of course, was the technical diagnosis. He might have said it another way had he written "overwork" and "overbearing." It was a long time since Mrs. Smith had been strong. She had nursed two of the children with measles right up to the day that the seventh had arrived. Three months later, with the eighth expected, she was going out charring. Her husband was out of work. The 30 shillings maternity benefit that would be coming to her from the national insurance department on the birth of her baby, would have to be supplemented somehow in order to meet all the additional expenses of the occasion. Well, the eighth baby was a miscarriage instead. Then there was the ninth, and then there was Jimmie, in quick succession. And with the five
