moved towards the door as her mother rose to prevent her from going out.

"Oh, mother, let me go," she pleaded. "It's best for all of us. It'll
kill me to stay in. Let me go, mother; I sha'n't be long."

Her mother still protested; but Fan, seeing her irresolution, slipped
past her and was out of the door in a moment.

Once out of the house she ran swiftly along the dark sloppy street until
she came to the wide thronged thoroughfare, bright with the flaring gas
of the shops; then, after a few moments' hesitation, walked rapidly
northwards.

Even in that squalid street where she lived, those who knew Fan from
living in the same house, or in one of those immediately adjoining it,
considered it a disgraceful thing for her parents to send her out
begging; for that was what they called it, although the begging was made
lawful by the match-selling pretext. To them it was a very flimsy one,
since the cost of a dozen such boxes at any oil-shop in the Edgware Road
was twopence-three-farthings--eleven farthings for twelve boxes of safety
matches! The London poor know how hard it is to live and pay their weekly
rent, and are accustomed to make every allowance for each other; and
those who sat in judgment on the Harrods--Fan's parents--were mostly
people who were glad to make a shilling by almost any means; glad also,
many of them, to get drunk occasionally when the state of the finances
allowed it; also they regarded it as the natural and right thing to do to
repair regularly every Monday morning to the pawnbroker's shop to pledge
the Sunday shoes and children's frocks, with perhaps a tool or two or a
pair of sheets and blankets not too dirty and ragged to tempt the
cautious gentleman with the big nose.