the stage; also, they were apparently so reluctant to leave the scene of their labours that they would commonly not return till the small hours.  The top front room was rented by an author, who made a precarious living by writing improving stories for weekly and monthly journals and magazines.  Whenever the postman’s knock was heard at the door, it was invariably followed by the appearance of the author in the passage, often in the scantiest of raiment, to discover whether the post had brought him any luck.  Although his stories were the delight of the more staid among his readers, the writer was on the best of terms with the “theatrical” young women, he spending most of his time in their company.  The lodgers at Mrs Gussle’s were typical of the inhabitants of Halverton Street.  And if a house influences the natures of those who dwell within its walls, how much more does the character of tenants find expression in the appearance of the place they inhabit?  Hence the shabbiness and decay which Halverton Street suggested.

Mavis heard from Perigal at infrequent intervals, when he would write scrappy notes inquiring after her health, and particularly after his child.  Once, he sent a sovereign, asking Mavis to have the boy photographed and to send him a copy.  Mavis did as she was asked.  The photographs cost eight shillings.  Although she badly wanted a few shillings to get her boots soled and heeled, she returned the money which was over after paying for the photographs, to Perigal.  She was resolved that no sordid question of money should soil their relationship, however attenuated this might become.

Much of Mavis’s time was taken up with her baby.  She washed, dressed, undressed, and took out her little one, duties which took up a considerable part of each day.  From lack of means she was compelled to wash her own and the baby’s body-linen, which she dried by suspending from cords stretched across the room.  All these labours were an aspect of maternity which she had never encountered in books.  Much of the work was debasing and menial; its performance left her weak and irritable; she believed that it was gradually breaking the little spirit she had brought from Mrs Gowler’s nursing home.  When she recalled the glowing periods she had chanced upon in her reading, which eulogised the supreme joys of motherhood, she supposed that they had been penned by writers with a sufficient staff of servants and with means that made a formidable laundry bill of no account.  She wondered how working-class women with big families managed, who, in addition to attending to the wants of their children, had all the work of the house upon their hands.  Mavis’s spare time was filled by the answering of advertisements in the hope of getting sorely needed work; the sending of these to their destination cost money for postage stamps, which made sad inroads on her rapidly dwindling funds.  But time and money were expended in vain.  The address from which she wrote was a poor recommendation