* * * * *

On coming out from Brown’s Buildings, she turned her steps reluctantly towards a street some distance from her own immediate neighbourhood, where she had a visit to pay which filled her with repulsion and an unusual sense of helplessness.  A clergyman who often availed himself of the help of the St. Martin’s nurses had asked the superintendent to undertake for him “a difficult case.”  Would one of their nurses go regularly to visit a certain house, ostensibly for the sake of a little boy of five just come back from the hospital, who required care at home for a while, really for the sake of his young mother, who had suddenly developed drinking habits and was on the road to ruin?

Marcella happened to be in the office when the letter arrived.  She somewhat unwillingly accepted the task, and she had now paid two or three visits, always dressing the child’s sore leg, and endeavouring to make acquaintance with the mother.  But in this last attempt she had not had much success.  Mrs. Vincent was young and pretty, with a flighty, restless manner.  She was always perfectly civil to Marcella, and grateful to her apparently for the ease she gave the boy.  But she offered no confidences; the rooms she and her husband occupied showed them to be well-to-do; Marcella had so far found them well-kept; and though the evil she was sent to investigate was said to be notorious, she had as yet discovered nothing of it for herself.  It seemed to her that she must be either stupid, or that there must be something about her which made Mrs. Vincent more secretive with her than with others; and neither alternative pleased her.

To-day, however, as she stopped at the Vincents’ door, she noticed that the doorstep, which was as a rule shining white, was muddy and neglected.  Then nobody came to open, though she knocked and rang repeatedly.  At last a neighbour, who had been watching the strange nurse through her own parlour window, came out to the street.

“I think, miss,” she said, with an air of polite mystery, “as you’d better walk in.  Mrs. Vincent ‘asn’t been enjyin’ very good ’ealth this last few days.”

Marcella turned the handle, found it yielded, and went in.  It was after six o’clock, and the evening sun streamed in through a door at the back of the house.  But in the Vincents’ front parlour the blinds were all pulled down, and the only sound to be heard was the fretful wailing of a child.  Marcella timidly opened the sitting-room door.

The room at first seemed to her dark.  Then she perceived Mrs. Vincent sitting by the grate, and the two children on the floor beside her.  The elder, the little invalid, was simply staring at his mother in a wretched silence; but the younger, the baby of three, was restlessly throwing himself hither and thither, now pulling at the woman’s skirts, now crying lustily, now whining in a hungry voice, for “Mama! din-din!  Mama! din-din!”