and paid her fifty pounds. We know how she fared in that attempt. On
leaving their office, Augusta bethought her of her banker. Perhaps he
might be willing to advance something. It was a horrible task, but she
determined to undertake it; so she walked to the bank and asked to see
the manager. He was out, but would be in at three o'clock. She went to a
shop near and got a bun and glass of milk, and waited till she was
ashamed to wait any longer, and then she walked about the streets till
three o'clock. At the stroke of the hour she returned, and was shown into
the manager's private room, where a dry, unsympathetic looking little man
was sitting before a big book. It was not the same man whom Augusta had
met before, and her heart sank proportionately.

What followed need not be repeated here. The manager listened to her
faltering tale with a few stereotyped expressions of sympathy, and, when
she had done, "regretted" that speculative loans were contrary to the
custom of the bank, and politely bowed her out.

It was nearly four o'clock upon a damp, drizzling afternoon--a November
afternoon--that hung like a living misery over the black slush of the
Birmingham streets, and would in itself have sufficed to bring the
lightest hearted, happiest mortal to the very gates of despair, when
Augusta, wet, wearied, and almost crying, at last entered the door of
their little sitting-room. She entered very quietly, for the
maid-of-all-work had met her in the passage and told her that Miss
Jeannie was asleep. She had been coughing very much about dinner-time,
but now she was asleep.

There was a fire in the grate, a small one, for the coal was economised
by means of two large fire-bricks, and on a table (Augusta's writing
table), placed at the further side of the room, was a paraffin-lamp