“Indeed!” remarked Mavis, wondering what she meant.

“But that’s tellin’s,” continued Mrs Gowler, looking greedily at Mavis from the depths of her little eyes.

“Is it?”

“Babies is little cusses; noisy, squally little brats.”

“Not one’s own.”

“That’s what I say.  I love the little dears.  Gawd’s messages I call them.  All the same, they’re there, as you might say.  An’ yer can’t explain them away.”

“True,” smiled Mavis.

“An’ their cost!” grumbled Mrs Gowler, as she drained the second bottle by putting it to her lips.  “They simply eat good money, an’ never ’ave enough.”

“One must look after one’s own,” remarked Mavis.

“Little dears!  ’Ow I love their pretty prattle.  It makes me think of ‘eavens an’ Gawd’s angels,” said Mrs Gowler.  Then, as Mavis did not make any remark, she added:  “Six was born ’ere last week.”

“So many!”

“But onny three’s alive.”

“The other three are dead!”

“It costs five bob a week an’ extries to let a kid live, to say nothin’ of the lies and trouble an’ all.  An’ no thanks you get for it.”

“A mother loves and looks after her own,” declared Mavis.

“Little dears!  Ain’t they pretty when they prattles their little prayers?” asked Mrs Gowler, as her lips parted in a terrible smile.  “Many’s the time I’ve given ’em gin from me own bottle to give the little angels sleep.”

She said more to the same effect, to pause before saying, with a return to her practical manner: 

“An’ the gentlemen!  They’re always ’appy when anything ’appens to baby.”

Mavis looked at the woman with questioning eyes; she wondered what she meant.  For a few moments Mrs Gowler attempted to lull Mavis’s uneasiness by extravagant praise of infants’ ways, which culminated in a hideous imitation of baby language.  Suddenly she stopped; her little eyes glared fiercely at Mavis, while her face became rigid.

“What’s the matter?” asked the girl.

Mrs Gowler rose unsteadily to her feet and said: 

“Ten quid down will save you from forking out five bob a week till you’re blue in the face from paying it.”

Mavis stared at her in astonishment.  Mrs Gowler backed to the door.

“Told yer you’d fallen on your feet.  Next time you’ll know better.  No pretty pretties:  one little nightdress is all you’ll want.  But it’s spot cash.”

Mavis was alone; it was, comparatively, a long time before she gathered what Mrs Gowler meant.  When she realised that the woman had as good as offered to murder her child, when born, for the sum of ten pounds, her first impulse was to leave the house.  But it was now late; she was worn out with the day’s happenings; also, she reflected that, with the scanty means at her disposal, a further move to a like house to Mrs Gowler’s might find her worse off than she already was.  Her heart was heavy with pain