the kitchen had always to have a big fire blazing in order that the old man might have the heat necessary for his comfort.  It appeared that Mrs Budd’s third daughter had died from curvature of the spine.  The mother related with great pride how that, just before death, the girl’s spine had formed the figure of a perfect “hess.”  Mavis was also informed that Mrs Budd could not think of knowing her next-door neighbour, because this person paid a penny a pound less for her suet than she herself did.

When Mavis was going upstairs to bed, she came upon Mrs Budd laboriously dragging her husband, a big, heavy man, up to bed by means of a cord slung about her shoulders and fastened to his waist.  Mavis subsequently learned that Mrs Budd had performed this feat every night for the last four years, her husband having lost the use of his limbs.

After Mavis had been a few days at Mrs Budd’s, she was sufficiently recovered to walk about Swanage.  One day she was even strong enough to get as far as the Tilly Whim caves, where she was both surprised and disgusted to find that some surpassing mediocrity had had the fatuousness to deface the sheer glory of the cliffs with improving texts, such as represent the sum of the world’s wisdom to the mind of a successful grocer, who has a hankering after the natural science which is retailed in ninepenny popular handbooks.  Often in these walks, Mavis encountered the man whom she had seen upon the day of her arrival; as before, he was pulling himself along on his tricycle.  The first two or three times they met, the cripple looked very hard at Jill, who always accompanied her mistress.  Afterwards, he took no notice of the dog; he had eyes only for Mavis, in whom he appeared to take a lively interest.  Mavis, who was well used to being stared at by men, paid no heed to the man’s frequent glances in her direction.

The sea air and the change did much for Mavis’s health; she was gradually roused from the lethargy from which she had suffered for so long.  But with the improvement in her condition came a firmer realisation of the hard lot which was hers.  Her love for Charlie Perigal had resulted in the birth of a child.  Although her lover had broken his vows, she could, in some measure, have consoled herself for his loss by devoting her life to the upbringing of her boy.  Now her little one had been taken from her, leaving a vast emptiness in her life which nothing could fill.  God, fate, chance, whatever power it was that ruled her life, had indeed dealt hardly with her.  She felt an old woman, although still a girl in years.  She had no interest in life:  she had nothing, no one to live for.