Some are lucky enough to meet with few obstacles, some are plucky enough to over-ride them, but in the greater number of cases, if people are saved at all they are saved so as by fire.

While Ernest was with me Ellen was looking out for a shop on the south side of the Thames near the “Elephant and Castle,” which was then almost a new and a very rising neighbourhood.  By one o’clock she had found several from which a selection was to be made, and before night the pair had made their choice.

Ernest brought Ellen to me.  I did not want to see her, but could not well refuse.  He had laid out a few of his shillings upon her wardrobe, so that she was neatly dressed, and, indeed, she looked very pretty and so good that I could hardly be surprised at Ernest’s infatuation when the other circumstances of the case were taken into consideration.  Of course we hated one another instinctively from the first moment we set eyes on one another, but we each told Ernest that we had been most favourably impressed.

Then I was taken to see the shop.  An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed.  Decay sets in at once in every part of it, and what mould and wind and weather would spare, street boys commonly destroy.  Ernest’s shop in its untenanted state was a dirty unsavoury place enough.  The house was not old, but it had been run up by a jerry-builder and its constitution had no stamina whatever.  It was only by being kept warm and quiet that it would remain in health for many months together.  Now it had been empty for some weeks and the cats had got in by night, while the boys had broken the windows by day.  The parlour floor was covered with stones and dirt, and in the area was a dead dog which had been killed in the street and been thrown down into the first unprotected place that could be found.  There was a strong smell throughout the house, but whether it was bugs, or rats, or cats, or drains, or a compound of all four, I could not determine.  The sashes did not fit, the flimsy doors hung badly; the skirting was gone in several places, and there were not a few holes in the floor; the locks were loose, and paper was torn and dirty; the stairs were weak and one felt the treads give as one went up them.

Over and above these drawbacks the house had an ill name, by reason of the fact that the wife of the last occupant had hanged herself in it not very many weeks previously.  She had set down a bloater before the fire for her husband’s tea, and had made him a round of toast.  She then left the room as though about to return to it shortly, but instead of doing so she went into the back kitchen and hanged herself without a word.  It was this which had kept the house empty so long in spite of its excellent position as a corner shop.  The last tenant had left immediately after the inquest, and if the owner had had it done up then people would have got over the tragedy that had been enacted in it, but the combination of bad condition and bad fame had hindered many from taking it, who like Ellen, could see that it had great business capabilities.  Almost anything would have sold there, but it happened also that there was no second-hand clothes shop in close proximity so that everything combined in its favour, except its filthy state and its reputation.