them the less I was able to do it. I asked the child whether she liked
oranges.

I asked the child, but the mother answered me, measuring her words.

"She likes nothing of ours. It's we that like and she that takes."
That was her reply.

"I am sure that she likes you at any rate," I said. Her hold on the
child tightened, as if to prevent an escape.

"She should, since I bore her. But she has much to forgive me."

Such a word left me dumb. I was not then able to meet women on such
terms. Nor did I then understand her as I do now.

Here is another case. There was a slatternly young woman whom I
caught, or who caught me, unawares; who suddenly threw open the
windows and showed me things I had never dreamed.

Opposite the chambers in R---- Buildings where I worked, or was
intended to work, and across a wall, there was a row of tenements
called, if I remember, Gaylord's Rents. Part mews, part warehouses,
and all disreputable, the upper story of it, as it showed itself to me
over the wall, held some of the frowsiest of London's horde. Exactly
before my eyes was one of the lowest of these hovels, the upper part
of a stable, I imagine, since it had, instead of a window, a door, of
which half was always shut and half always open, so that light might
get in or the tenants lean out to take the air.