The syrup seemed to stop the cough but to disturb the digestion, for I saw the stain of curdled milk on baby’s bib and was conscious of her increasing weakness.

This alarmed me very much, and little as I knew of children’s ailments, I became convinced that she stood in need of more fresh air, so I entreated Mrs. Oliver to take her for a walk every day.

I doubt if she ever did so, for as often as I would say: 

“Has baby been out to-day, nurse?” Mrs. Oliver would make some lame excuse and pass quickly to another subject.

At last, being unable to bear the strain any longer, I burst out on the woman with bitter reproaches, and then she broke down into tears and explained everything.  She was behind with her rent, the landlord was threatening, and she dared not leave the house for a moment lest he should lock her out altogether.

“I don’t mind telling you, it’s all along of Ted, ma’am.  He’s on strike wages but he spends it at the ‘Sun.’  He has never been the man to me—­never once since I married him.  I could work and keep the house comfortable without him, but he wouldn’t let me a-be, because he knows I love, him dear.  Yes, I do, I love him dear,” she continued, breaking into hysterical sobs, “and if he came home and killed me I could kiss him with my last breath.”

This touched me more than I can say.  A sense of something tragic in the position of the poor woman, who knew the character of the man she loved as well as the weakness which compelled her to love him, made me sympathise with her for the first time, and think (with a shuddering memory of my own marriage) how many millions of women there must be in the world who were in a worse position than myself.

On returning to my room that night I began to look about to see if I had anything I could sell in order to help Mrs. Oliver, and so put an end to the condition that kept my baby a prisoner in her house.

I had nothing, or next to nothing.  Except the Reverend Mother’s rosary (worth no more than three or four shillings) I had only my mother’s miniature, which was framed in gold and set in pearls, but that was the most precious of all my earthly possessions except my child.

Again and again when I looked at it in my darkest hours I had found new strength and courage.  It had been like a shrine to me—­what the image of the Virgin was in happier days—­and thinking of all that my darling mother had done and suffered and sacrificed for my sake when I was myself a child, I felt that I could never part with her picture under the pressure of any necessity whatever.

“Never,” I thought, “never under any circumstances.”

It must have been about a week after this that I went to Ilford on one of those chill, clammy nights which seem peculiar to the East End of London, where the atmosphere, compounded of smoke and fog and thin drizzling rain; penetrates to the bone and hangs on one’s shoulders like a shroud.