They talked of her with subdued voices, reverently and tenderly.  Waymark described what he knew or divined of the life she was now leading, her beneficent activity, her perfect adaptation to the new place she filled.

“In a little while,” Julian said, when they had fallen into thought again, “you will have your second letter.  And then?”

There was no answer.  Julian waited a moment, then rose and, clasping his friend’s hand, bade him good night.

Waymark awoke once or twice before morning, but there was no coughing in the next room.  He felt glad, and wondered whether there was indeed any improvement in the invalid’s health.  But at the usual breakfast-time Julian did not appear.  Waymark knocked at his door, with no result.  He turned the handle and entered.

On this same day, Ida was visiting her houses.  Litany lane and Elm Court now wore a changed appearance.  At present it was possible to breathe even in the inmost recesses of the Court.  There the fronts of the houses were fresh white-washed; in the Lane they were new-painted.  Even the pavement and the road-way exhibited an improvement.  If you penetrated into garrets and cellars you no longer found squalor and dilapidation; poverty in plenty, but at all events an attempt at cleanliness everywhere, as far, that is to say, as a landlord’s care could ensure it.  The stair-cases had ceased to be rotten pit-falls; the ceilings showed traces of recent care; the walls no longer dripped with moisture or were foul with patches of filth.  Not much change, it is true, in the appearance of the inhabitants; yet close inquiry would have elicited comforting assurances of progressing reform, results of a supervision which was never offensive, never thoughtlessly exaggerated.  Especially in the condition of the children improvement was discernible.  Lodgers in the Lane and the Court had come to understand that not even punctual payment of weekly rent was sufficient to guarantee them stability of tenure.  Under this singular lady-landlord something more than that was expected and required, and, whilst those who were capable of adjusting themselves to the new regime found, on the whole, that things went vastly better with them, such as could by no means overcome their love of filth, moral and material, troubled themselves little when the notice to quit came, together with a little sum of ready money to cover the expenses of removal.

Among those whom Ida called upon this afternoon was an old woman who, in addition to her own voluminous troubles, was always in a position to give a compte-rendu of the general distress of the neighbourhood.  People had discovered that her eloquence could be profitably made use of in their own service, and not infrequently, when speaking with Ida, she was in reality holding a brief from this or that neighbour, marked, not indeed in guineas, but in “twos” of strong beverage, obtainable at her favourite house of call.  To-day she held such a brief, and was more than usually urgent in the representation of a deserving case.