'You forget what a hard life you had with Mrs. Wootton at the
Hatch.'

'No, I don't forget. She had a rough tongue, but she was one of our
set. She got as good as she gave. She spoke her mind, and I spoke
mine, and there was an end to it. But this lot--they are so stuck-
up and stuck-round. I never saw such folk in our parts--they make
me feel as if I were the dirt under their feet.'

'Never mind them. I have more to put up with than you have. You
know all; you may be sure, if I could help it, I shouldn't be here.'

'I do know all. I shouldn't grieve if that stepmother of yours
drank herself to death. O Lord, when I see what you have to go
through I am ashamed of myself. But you were made one way and I
another. You dear, patient creature!'

'It's half-past eleven. It is time to go to bed.'

They went to their cold lean-to garrets under the slates.

Miss Toller lay awake for hours. This, then, was Christmas Eve, one
more Christmas Eve. She recollected another Christmas Eve twenty
years gone. She went out to a party, she and her father and mother
and sister; mother and sister now dead. Somebody walked home with
her that clear, frosty night. Strange! Miss Toller, Brighton
lodging-house keeper, always in black gown--no speck of colour even
on Sundays--whose life was spent before sinks and stoves, through
whose barred kitchen windows the sun never shone, had wandered in