Thinking of this, as I thought of everything, in relation to baby, I bought, as I was passing a hosier’s shop, a pair of nice warm stockings and a little woollen jacket.

When I reached the Olivers’ I found, to my surprise, two strange men stretched out at large in the kitchen, one on the sofa and the other in the rocking-chair, both smoking strong tobacco and baby coughing constantly.

Before I realised what had happened Mrs. Oliver called me into the scullery, and, after closing the door on us, she explained the position, in whispers broken by sobs.

It was the rent.  These were the bailiff’s men put into possession by the landlord, and unless she could find two pounds ten by nine o’clock to-morrow morning, she and her husband would be sold up and turned into the street.

“The home as I’ve been scraping and pinching to keep together!” she cried.  “For the sake of two pound ten! . . .  You couldn’t lend us that much, could you?”

I told her I could not, but she renewed her entreaties, asking me to think if I had not something I could pawn for them, and saying that Ted and she would consider it “a sacred dooty” to repay.

Again I told her I had nothing—­I was trying not to think of the miniature—­but just at that moment she caught sight of the child’s jacket which I was still holding in my hand, and she fell on me with bitter reproaches.

“You’ve money enough to spend on baby, though.  It’s crool.  Her living in lukshry and getting new milk night and day, and fine clothes being bought for her constant, and my pore Ted without a roof to cover him in weather same as this.  It breaks my heart.  It do indeed.  Take your child away, ma’am.  Take her to-night, afore we’re turned out of house and home to-morrow morning.”

Before the hysterical cries with which Mrs. Oliver said this had come to an end I was on my way back to my room at the Jew’s.  But it was baby I was thinking of in relation to that cold, clammy night—­that it would be impossible to take her out in it (even if I had somewhere to take her to, which I had not) without risk to her health and perhaps her life.

With trembling fingers and an awful pain at my heart I took my mother’s miniature from the wall and wrapped it up in tissue paper.

A few minutes afterwards I was back in the damp streets, walking fast and eagerly, cutting over the lines of the electric trams without looking for the crossings.

I knew where I was going to—­I was going to a pawnbroker’s in the Mile End Waste which I had seen on my West End journeys.  When I got there I stole in at a side door, half-closing my eyes as I did so, by that strange impulse which causes us to see nothing when we do not wish to be seen.