Mavis drank some of the liquor and certainly felt the better for it.

“I bought you a quarter of German,” declared Mrs Bilkins, as she enrolled a paper parcel.

“You mean German sausage,” said Mavis, as she caught sight of the mottled meat, a commodity which her old friend Mr Siggers sold.

“I always call it German,” remarked Mrs Bilkins, a trifle huffily.

“But what am I to eat it on?”

“That is funny.  I’m always forgetting,” said Mrs Bilkins, as she faded from the room.

After some time, she came back with a coarse cloth, a thick plate, a wooden-handled knife, together with a fork made of some pliant material; these she put before Mavis.

The coarse food and more of the stout put fresh heart into the girl.  She got a room from Mrs Bilkins for six shillings a week, on the understanding that she did not give much trouble.

“There’s only one thing.  I suppose you have a bath of some sort?” said Mavis.

“That is funny,” said Mrs Bilkins.  “I’ve never been asked such a thing in my life.”

“Don’t you wash?”

“In penny pieces; a bit at a time.”

“But never all over, properly?”

“You are funny.  Why, three years ago, I had the rheumatics; then I was covered all over with flannel.  Now I don’t know which is flannel and which is skin.”

It was arranged, however, that, if Mrs Bilkins could not borrow a bath from a neighbour in the morning, she would bring Mavis her washing-tin, which would answer the same purpose.  Mavis slept soundly in a fairly clean room, her wanderings after leaving “Dawes’” having tired her out.

The next morning she came down to a breakfast of which the tea was smoked and her solitary egg was scarcely warm; when she opened this latter, the yolk successfully eluded the efforts of her spoon to get it out.  It may be said at once that this meal was a piece with the entire conduct of Mrs Bilkins’s house, she being a unit in the vast army of incapable, stupid women who, sooner or later, drift into the letting of lodgings as a means of livelihood.  After breakfast, Mavis wrote to “Dawes’,” requesting that her boxes might be sent to her present address.  Now that the sun of cold reason, which reaches its zenith in the early morning, illumined the crowded events of yesterday, Mavis was concerned for the consequences of the violence she had offered Orgles.  Her faith in human justice had been much disturbed; she feared that Orgles, moved with a desire for vengeance, would represent her as the aggressor, himself as the victim of an unprovoked assault:  any moment she feared to find herself in the clutches of the law.  She was too dispirited to look for work; to ease the tension in her mind, she tried to discover what had become of Mrs Ellis, but without success.

About five, two letters came for her, one of these being, as the envelope told her, from “Dawes’.”  She fearfully opened it.  To her great surprise, the letter regretted the firm’s inability to continue her temporary engagement; it enclosed a month’s salary in place of the usual notice, together with the money due to her for her present month’s services; it concluded by stating that her conduct had given great satisfaction to the firm, and that it would gladly give her further testimonials should she be in want of these to secure another place.