Mavis next advertised in local papers for pupils to whom she would teach music.  Receiving no replies, she attempted to get employment in a house of business; this effort resulted in her obtaining work as a canvasser, remuneration being made by results.  This meant tramping the pavement in all weathers, going up and coming down countless flights of stairs, swallowing all kinds of humiliating rebuffs in the effort to sell some encyclopedia or somebody’s set of novels, which no one wanted.  She always met with disappointment and, in time, became used to it; but there were occasions when a purchaser seemed likely, when hope would beat high, only to give place to sickening despair when her offer was finally rejected.  On the whole, she met with civility and consideration from the young men (mostly clerks in offices) whom she interviewed; but there was a type of person whose loud-voiced brutality cut her to the quick.  This was the West-end tradesman.  She would walk into a shop in Bond Street or thereabouts, when the proprietor, taking her for a customer, would advance with cringing mien, wringing his hands the while.  No sooner did he learn that the girl wanted him to buy something, than his manner immediately changed.  Usually, in coarse and brutal voice, he would order her from the shop; sometimes, if he were in a facetious mood, and if he had the time to spare, he would make fun of her and mock her before a crowd of grinning underlings.  To this day, the sight of a West-end tradesman fills Mavis with unspeakable loathing; nothing would ever mitigate the horror which their treatment of her inspired at this period of her life.

Then Mavis, in reply to one of her many answers to advertisements, received a letter asking her to call at an office in Eastcheap, at a certain time.  Arrived there, she learned how she could earn a pound a week by canvassing, together with commission, if her sales were successful.  She had eagerly accepted the offer, when she learned that she was to make house-to-house calls in certain London suburbs (she was to commence at Peckham), armed with a bottle of pickles and a bottle of sauce.  She was furnished with a Peckham local directory and was instructed to make calls at every house in her district, when she was to ask for the mistress by name, in order to disarm suspicion on the part of whoever might open the door.  When she was asked inside, she was to do her utmost to get orders for the pickles and the sauce, supplies of which were sent beforehand to a grocer in the neighbourhood.  Mavis did not relish the job, but was driven by the goad of necessity.  On her way home to tell Mrs. Ellis that she would be leaving immediately to live in Peckham, she slipped on a piece of banana skin and twisted her ankle, an accident which kept her indoors for the best part of a week.  When she had written to Eastcheap to say that she was well enough to commence work, she had received a letter which informed her that her place had been filled.