Soon after, Mr Scatchard left with the two women, looking, for all the world, like a prisoner in charge of lynx-eyed warders.  Then Mavis made the long and tiring journey to New Cross.  Nurse G. had advertised her nursing home as being at No. 9 Durley Road.  This latter she found to be a depressing little thoroughfare of two-storeyed houses, all exactly alike.  She could discover nothing particularly inviting in the outside appearance of No. 9.  Soiled, worn, cotton lace curtains hung behind not over-clean windows; behind these again were dusty, carefully closed Venetian blinds.  Mavis passed and repassed the house, uncertain whether or not to call.  Before deciding which to do, she made a mental calculation (she was always doing this now) of exactly how much she would have left after being paid by Mr Poulter and settling up with Mrs Scatchard.  As before, she reckoned to have exactly seven pounds fifteen shillings.  She had no intention of asking Perigal for help, as in his last letter he had made copious reference to his straitened circumstances.  Any debasing shifts and mean discomforts to which her poverty might expose her she looked on as a yet further sacrifice upon the altar of the loved one, faith in whom had become the cardinal feature of her life.  The terms “strictly moderate” advertised by Nurse G. decided her.  She opened the iron gate and walked to the door.  Directly she knocked, she heard two or three windows thrown up in neighbouring houses, from which the bodies of unkempt women projected, to cast interested glances in Mavis’s direction.  As she waited, she could hear the faint puling of a baby within the house.  Next, she was conscious that a lath of a Venetian blind was pulled aside and that someone was spying upon her from the aperture.  She waited further, the while two of the curious women who leaned from the windows were loudly deciding the date on which Mavis’s baby would be born.  Then, the door of No. 9 was suspiciously opened about six inches.  Mavis found herself eagerly scanned by a fraction of a woman’s face.  The next moment, the woman, who had caught sight of Mavis’s appearance, which was now very indicative of her condition, threw the door wide open and called cheerily: 

“Come in, my dear; come in.”

“I want Nurse G.,” said Mavis.

“That’s me:  G—­Gowler.  Come inside.”

“But—­” hesitated Mavis, as she glanced at the repulsive face of the woman.

“Do either one thing or the other:  come right in or keep out.  The neighbours do that talk.”

Mavis walked into the passage, at which the woman sharply closed the door.  The puling of the baby was distinctly louder.

“We’ll ’ave to talk ’ere,” continued the woman, with some weakening of her previous cordiality, “we’re that full up:  two in a room an’ all expectin’.  But then it never rains but it pours, as you might say.”