“Courage! courage!  You simply mustn’t think.  And that’s where drink comes in.”

Mavis sighed.

“Don’t you ever take to the life,” admonished Lil.

“I’m not likely to,” shuddered Mavis.

“’Cause you ain’t the least built that way.  And thank God you ain’t.”

“I do; I do,” said Mavis fervently.

“It’s easy enough to blame, I know; but if you’ve a little one and no one in the wide world to turn to for help, and the little one’s crying for food, what can a poor girl do?” asked Lil, as she became thoughtful and sad-looking.

A time came when Mavis was sorely pressed for money to buy the bare necessaries of life.  She could not even afford soap with which to wash her own and her baby’s clothes.  Of late, she had made frequent visits to Mrs Scatchard’s, where she had left many of her belongings.  All of these that were saleable she had brought away and had disposed of either at pawnshops or at second-hand dealers in clothes.  She had at last been constrained to part with her most prized trinkets, even including those which belonged to her father and the ring that Perigal had given her, and which she had worn suspended from her neck.

She now had but one and sixpence in the world.  The manifold worries and perplexities consequent upon her poverty had affected her health.  She was no longer able to supply her baby with its natural food.  She was compelled to buy milk from the neighbouring dairy and to sterilise it to the best of her ability.  To add to her distress, her boy’s health suffered from the change of diet.  Times without number, she had been on the point of writing to Perigal to tell him of all she had suffered and to ask for help, but pride had held her back.  Now, the declension in her boy’s health urged her to throw this pride to the winds, to do what common sense had been suggesting for so long.  She had prayed eloquently, earnestly, often, for Divine assistance:  so far, no reply had been vouchsafed.  When evening came, she could bear no longer the restraint imposed by the four walls of her room.  She had had nothing to eat that day; all she had had the day before was a crust of bread, which she had gleefully lighted upon at the back of her cupboard.  This she would have shared with Jill, had not her friend despised such plain fare.  Jill had lately developed a habit of running upstairs at meal times, when, after an interval, she would come down to lick her chops luxuriously before falling asleep.

Mavis was faint for lack of nourishment; hunger pains tore at her stomach.  She felt that, if she did not get some air, she would die of the heat and exhaustion.  Her baby was happily sleeping soundly, so she had no compunction in setting out.  She crossed Lupus Street, where her nostrils were offended by the smell of vegetable refuse from the costermonger stalls, to walk in the direction of Victoria.  The air was vapid and stale, but this did not prevent the dwellers