to come up and down every time she went out and in, and drunken men
cursing and blaspheming up above in the street! Well! I'm going to tell
you a tale of one of the happiest old women I know, but I'm afraid it's
got to be about a day on which she wasn't happy at all.

"Her name's Jane Clark, and she lives in that cellar I'm speaking of on
2s. 6d. a week she has from the parish. She's a widow, and some of you
women know what that means. She pays 1s. 3d. for her share of the
cellar, for you know in towns such as I come from, we're building so
many factories, and railway sheds, and what not, that we've no room left
to live in, so Mrs Clark had to share even her cellar. Many a time when
I passed down that dreadful street and hadn't time to go in, I'd just
shout down the cellar and she'd have an answer back in no time. I used
to go down for a few minutes, just to cheer myself up a bit, for there's
a lot of discouraging things happen in our sort of work, and she always
made me ashamed. She was so content, never wanting more and always
thankful for what she had.

"Well! one day I was in Paradise Street. It was wet and cold, and the
beer-shops were full of drunken men and women, and even the children
were shouting foul language.

"'O God,' I said, ready to cry out in the street, 'How long will the
power of the devil last in this town?' However, I thought of Mrs Clark
down there, and how she had to live in it all, so I went down the steps,
and there she was, but I could see that even she had been crying.

"'Now, Mrs Clark!' I said, 'you don't mean to tell me that it's your
turn to be cheered up?'