“A quick job that,” she remarked to Mavis, who did not make any reply.  “Let’s ’ope you’ll be as sharp,” added the woman, as she disappeared into the kitchen.

Mavis gathered from these remarks that a mother had been delivered of a child during Mrs Gowler’s brief sojourn upstairs.  The latter confirmed this surmise by saying a little later, when she issued from the kitchen drying her hands and bared arms on a towel: 

“The worst of these here nursing ’omes is that yer never knows when you’re going to be on the job.  I didn’t expect Liz till termorrer.”

Mavis made no reply.

“Would you like a glass of stout?” asked Mrs Gowler.

“No, thank you.”

“I’m going to open another bottle an’ thought you’d join, jes’ friendly like, as you might say.  What with the work an’ the ’eat of the kitchen, I tell yer, I can do with it.”

“I’m tired of sitting in this horrible passage.  I wish you would show me to my room.”

“Wait till it’s ready,” retorted Mrs Gowler, angry at her hospitality being refused.

“It ought to be ready.  What else did I arrange to come for?”

“You can go up if you like, but Mrs May is bathing her baby, an’ there’s no room to move.”

“Does—­does that mean that you haven’t given me a room to myself?” cried Mavis.

“Wot more d’ye expect for wot you’re payin’?”

Mavis made up her mind.

“If you don’t give me a room to myself, I shall go,” declared Mavis.

“And ’ave yer baby in the street?”

“That’s my affair.”

Mavis rose as if to make good her words.

Seeing that she was in earnest, Mrs Gowler said: 

“Don’t be a mug.  I’ll see what I can do.”

Mavis was much relieved when Mrs Gowler waddled up the stairs, taking with her an evil-smelling oil lamp.  The woman’s presence was beginning to inspire her with a nameless dread, which was alien to the repulsion inspired by her appearance and coarse speech.  Now and again, Mavis caught a glimpse of terrifying depths of resolution in the woman’s nature; then she seemed as if she would stick at nothing in order to gain her ends.

“This way, please, Mrs ’Aughty,” Mrs Gowler presently called from the landing above Mavis’s head.

Mavis walked up the two flights of stairs, followed by Jill, where she found Mrs Gowler in the passage leading to the two top-back rooms of the house.  One of these was small, being little larger than a box-room, but to Mavis’s eyes it presented the supreme advantage of being untenanted by any other patient.

“We’d better ’ave most of the furniture out, ‘ceptin’ the bed and washstand,” declared Mrs Gowler.

“But where am I to keep my things?” asked Mavis.

“Can’t you ‘ave your box jes’ outside the door?  If there ain’t no space, you might pop off before I could hop round the bed.”

“Is it often dangerous?” faltered Mavis.