filled by a long table covered by a scanty cloth, at which several
pasty-faced, unwholesome-looking young women were eating bread and
cheese, the while they talked in whispers or read from journals,
books, or novelettes. At the head of the table sat a dark, elderly
little woman, who seemed to be all nose and fuzzy hair: this person
was not eating. Several of the girls looked with weary curiosity at
Mavis, while they mentally totted up the price she had paid for her
clothes; when they reached their respective totals, they resumed
their meal.

"Miss Keeth?" said the dark little woman at the head of the table,
who spoke with a lisp.

"Yes," replied Mavis.

"If you want thupper, you'll find a theat."

"Thank you."

Mavis sank wearily in the first empty chair. "Dawes'" had already
got on her nerves. She was sick at heart with all she had gone
through; from the depths of her being she resented being considered
on an equality with the two young women she had met and those she
saw about her. She closed her eyes as she tried to take herself, for
a brief moment, from her surroundings. She was recalled to the
present by a plate, on which was a hunk of bread and a piece of
cheese, being thrust beneath her nose. She was hungry when she came
downstairs; now, appetite had left her. Her gorge rose at the pasty-
faced girls, the brick-walled cellar, the unwholesome air, and the
beady-eyed little woman seated at the head of the table. She thought