‘Go into the next room,’ she commanded suddenly, ’and fetch the matches off of the mantel-piece.  I shall want to go upstairs presently, to see if you’ve scrubbed the bed-room well.’

Jane was blanched; but she rose from her knees at once, and reached a candlestick from above the fireplace.

‘What’s that for?’ shouted Clem, with her mouth full.  ’You’ve no need of a light to find the mantel-piece.  If you’re not off—­’

Jane hastened from the kitchen.  Clem yelled to her to close the door, and she had no choice but to obey.  In the dark passage outside there was darkness that might be felt.  The child all but fainted with the sickness of horror as she turned the handle of the other door and began to grope her way.  She knew exactly where the coffin was; she knew that to avoid touching it in the diminutive room was all but impossible.  And touch it she did.  Her anguish uttered itself, not in a mere sound of terror, but in a broken word or two of a prayer she knew by heart, including a name which sounded like a charm against evil.  She had reached the mantel-piece; oh, she could not, could not find the matches I Yes, at last her hand closed on them.  A blind rush, and she was out again in the passage.  She re-entered the front-kitchen with limbs that quivered, with the sound of dreadful voices ringing about her, and blankness before her eyes.

Clem laughed heartily, then finished her beer in a long, enjoyable pull.  Her appetite was satisfied; the last trace of oleaginous matter had disappeared from her plate, and now she toyed with little pieces of bread lightly dipped into the mustard-pot.  These bonnes bouches put her into excellent humour; presently she crossed her arms and leaned back.  There was no denying that Clem was handsome; at sixteen she had all her charms in apparent maturity, and they were of the coarsely magnificent order.  Her forehead was low and of great width; her nose was well shapen, and had large sensual apertures; her cruel lips may be seen on certain fine antique busts; the neck that supported her heavy head was splendidly rounded.  In laughing, she became a model for an artist, an embodiment of fierce life independent of morality.  Her health was probably less sound than it seemed to be; one would have compared her, not to some piece of exuberant normal vegetation, but rather to a rank, evilly-fostered growth.  The putrid soil of that nether world yields other forms besides the obviously blighted and sapless.

‘Have you done any work for Mrs. Hewett to-day?’ she asked of her victim, after sufficiently savouring the spectacle of terror.

‘Yes, miss; I did the front-room fireplace, an’ fetched fourteen of coals, an’ washed out a few things.’

‘What did she give you?’

‘A penny, miss.  I gave it to Mrs. Peckover before she went.’

’Oh, you did?  Well, look ’ere; you’ll just remember in future that all you get from the lodgers belongs to me, an’ not to mother.  It’s a new arrangement, understand.  An’ if you dare to give up a ’apenny to mother, I’ll lick you till you’re nothin’ but a bag o’ bones.  Understand?’