The South-west wind blew, and the hours of the night were not evil to outcasts.  Emilia saw many lying about, getting rest where they might.  She hurried her eye pityingly over little children, but the devil that had seized her sprang contempt for the others—­older beggars, who appeared to succumb to their fate when they should have lifted their heads up bravely.  On she passed from square to market, market to park; and presently her mind shot an arrow of desire for morning, which was nothing less than hunger beginning to stir.  “When will the shops open?” She tried to cheat herself by replying that she did not care when, but pangs of torment became too rapid for the counterfeit.  Her imagination raised the roof from those great rich houses, and laid bare a brilliancy of dish-covers; and if any sharp gust of air touched the nerve in her nostril, it seemed instantaneously charged with the smell of old dinners.  “No,” cried Emilia, “I dislike anything but plain food.”  She quickly gave way, and admitted a craving for dainty morsels.  “One lump of sugar!” she subsequently sighed.  But neither sugar nor meat approached her.

Her seat was under trees, between a man and a woman who slanted from her with hidden chins.  The chilly dry leaves began to waken, and the sky showed its grey.  Hunger had become as a leaden ball in Emilia’s chest.  She could have eaten eagerly still, but she had no ravenous images of food.  Nevertheless, she determined to beg for bread at a baker’s shop.  Coming into the empty streets again, the dread of exposing her solitary wretchedness and the stains of night upon her, kept her back.  When she did venture near the baker’s shop, her sensation of weariness, want of washing, and general misery, made her feel a contrast to all other women she saw, that robbed her of the necessary effrontery.  She preferred to hide her head.

The morning hours went in this conflict.  She was between-whiles hungry and desperate, or stricken with shame.  Fatigue, bringing the imperious necessity for rest, intervened as a relief.  Emilia moaned at the weary length of the light, but when dusk fell and she beheld flame in the lamps, it seemed to be too sudden and she was alarmed.  Passive despair had set in.  She felt sick, though not weak, and the thought of asking help had gone.

A street urchin, of the true London species, in whom excess of woollen comforter made up for any marked scantiness in the rest of his attire, came trotting the pavement, pouring one of the favourite tunes of his native metropolis through the tube of a penny-whistle, from which it did not issue so disguised but that attentive ears might pronounce it the royal march of the Cannibal Islands.  A placarded post beside a lamp met this musician’s eye; and, still piping, he bent his knees and read the notification.  Emilia thought of the Hillford and Ipley clubmen, the big drum, the speeches, the cheers, and all the wild strength that lay in her that happy morning.