“Ger in.”

I told him I could not afford to ride.

“Ger in,” he said again more loudly, and as if angry with himself for having to say it.

Again I made some demur, and then the old man said, speaking fiercely through his grizzly beard: 

“Look ’ere, missie.  I ‘ave a gel o’ my own lost somewheres, and I wouldn’t be ans’rable to my ole woman if I let you walk with a face like that.”

I don’t know what I said to him.  I only know that my tears gushed out and that at the next moment I was sitting in the cab.

What happened then I do not remember, except that the dull rumble of the wheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and that I saw through the mist before my eyes a sluggish river, a muddy canal, and patches of marshy fields.

I think my weariness and perhaps my emotion, added to the heavy monotonous trotting of the old horse, must have put me to sleep, for after a while I was conscious of a great deal of noise, and of the old driver twisting about and shouting in a cheerful voice through the open window at the back of his seat: 

“Stratford Market.”

After a while we came to a broad road, full of good houses, and then the old driver cried “Ilford,” and asked what part of it I wished to go to.

I reached forward and told him, “10 Lennard’s Row, Lennard’s Green,” and then sat back with a lighter heart.

But after another little while I saw a great many funeral cars passing us, with the hearses empty, as if returning from a cemetery.  This made me think of the woman and her story, and I found myself unconsciously clasping my baby closer.

The corteges became so numerous at last that to shut out painful sights I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasanter things.

I thought, above all, of Mrs. Oliver’s house, as I had always seen it in my mind’s eye—­not a pretentious place at all, only a little humble cottage but very sweet and clean, covered with creepers and perhaps with roses.

I was still occupied with these visions when I felt the cab turn sharply to the left.  Then opening my eyes I saw that we were running down a kind of alley-way, with a row of very mean little two-storey houses on the one side, and on the other, a kind of waste ground strewn with broken bottles, broken iron pans, broken earthenware and other refuse, interspersed with tufts of long scraggy grass, which looked the more wretched because the sinking sun was glistening over it.

Suddenly the cab slowed down and stopped.  Then the old man jumped from his box and opening his cab door, said: 

“Here you are, missie.  This is your destingnation.”

There must have been a moment of semi-consciousness in which I got out of the cab, for when I came to full possession of myself I was standing on a narrow pavement in front of a closed door which bore the number 10.

At first I was stunned.  Then my heart was in my mouth and it was as much as I could do not to burst out crying.  Finally I wanted to fly, and I turned back to the cab, but it had gone and was already passing round the corner.