and had thus got ahead of him, paused in her ravenous mastication and
made a wry face. Solomon took a huge bite at his crust, then he uttered
an inarticulate "pooh," and spat out his mouthful.

There was no salt in the bread.




CHAPTER II.

THE SWEATER.


The catastrophe was not complete. There were some long thin fibres of
pale boiled meat, whose juices had gone to enrich the soup, lying about
the floor or adhering to the fragments of the pitcher. Solomon, who was
a curly-headed chap of infinite resource, discovered them, and it had
just been decided to neutralize the insipidity of the bread by the
far-away flavor of the meat, when a peremptory knocking was heard at the
door, and a dazzling vision of beauty bounded into the room.

"'Ere! What are you doin', leavin' things leak through our ceiling?"

Becky Belcovitch was a buxom, bouncing girl, with cherry cheeks that
looked exotic in a land of pale faces. She wore a mass of black crisp
ringlets aggressively suggestive of singeing and curl-papers. She was
the belle of Royal Street in her spare time, and womanly triumphs dogged
even her working hours. She was sixteen years old, and devoted her youth
and beauty to buttonholes. In the East End, where a spade is a spade, a