Mr. Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken off his heavy coat.
He turned to Charity. "Come and help me," he said.
He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed the lids over the dead
woman's eyes. Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and tried
to compose her mother's body. She drew the stocking over the dreadful
glistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturned
boots. As she did so, she looked at her mother's face, thin yet swollen,
with lips parted in a frozen gasp above the broken teeth. There was no
sign in it of anything human: she lay there like a dead dog in a ditch
Charity's hands grew cold as they touched her.
Mr. Miles drew the woman's arms across her breast and laid his coat
over her. Then he covered her face with his handkerchief, and placed the
bottle with the candle in it at her head. Having done this he stood up.
"Is there no coffin?" he asked, turning to the group behind him.
There was a moment of bewildered silence; then the fierce girl spoke up.
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