She had, none the less, to give her mind steadily to what Mr. Mudge had
again written her about, the idea of her applying for a transfer to an
office quite similar--she couldn't yet hope for a place in a bigger--under
the very roof where he was foreman, so that, dangled before her every
minute of the day, he should see her, as he called it, "hourly," and in a
part, the far N.W. district, where, with her mother, she would save on
their two rooms alone nearly three shillings. It would be far from
dazzling to exchange Mayfair for Chalk Farm, and it wore upon her much
that he could never drop a subject; still, it didn't wear as things _had_
worn, the worries of the early times of their great misery, her own, her
mother's and her elder sister's--the last of whom had succumbed to all
but absolute want when, as conscious and incredulous ladies, suddenly
bereft, betrayed, overwhelmed, they had slipped faster and faster down
the steep slope at the bottom of which she alone had rebounded. Her
mother had never rebounded any more at the bottom than on the way; had
only rumbled and grumbled down and down, making, in respect of caps,
topics and "habits," no effort whatever--which simply meant smelling much
of the time of whiskey.




CHAPTER II


It was always rather quiet at Cocker's while the contingent from Ladle's
and Thrupp's and all the other great places were at luncheon, or, as the
young men used vulgarly to say, while the animals were feeding. She had
forty minutes in advance of this to go home for her own dinner; and when
she came back and one of the young men took his turn there was often half