with a bed, a small deal table, one chair, and a deal box, which served
as a washing-stand. But there was a fire burning in the small grate, with
a kettle on; and a cottage loaf, an earthenware teapot with half its
spout broken off, and one cup and saucer, also a good deal damaged, were
on the table, the poor woman having made all preparations for her tea
before going out to buy her bloater.

"Take off your hat and sit here," she said, drawing her one cane-bottomed
chair near the fire.

Fan obeyed, putting her hat on the bed, and then sat warming herself, too
tired and sad to think of anything.

Meanwhile her hostess took off her boots and began quietly moving about
the room, which was uncarpeted, finishing her preparations for tea. The
herring was put down to toast before the coals and the tea made; then she
went downstairs and returned with a second cup. Finally she drew the
little table up to the bed, which would serve as a second seat. It was
all so strangely quiet there, with no sound except the kettle singing,
and the hissing and sputtering of the toasting herring, that the
unaccustomed silence had the effect of rousing the girl, and she glanced
at the woman moving so noiselessly about the room. She was not yet past
middle age, but had the coarsened look and furrowed skin of one whose lot
in life had been hard; her hair was thin and lustreless, sprinkled with
grey, and there was a faraway look of weary resignation in her dim blue
eyes. Fan pitied her, and remembering that but for this poor woman's
sympathy she would have been still out in the cold streets, with no
prospect of a shelter for the night, she bent down her face and began to
cry quietly.