ll wrote about colonial exhibitions and
popular spectacles, and country outings for babies of
the slums, and longed for a fairer field. As midsummer
came on there arrived a dearth in these objects of orthodox
interest, and Rattray told her she might submit "anything
on the nail" that occurred to her, in addition to such
work as the office could give her to do. Then, in spite
of the vigilance of the editor-in-chief, an odd
unconventional bit of writing crept now and then into
the _Age_--an interview with some eccentric notability
with the piquancy of a page from Gyp, a bit of pathos
picked out of the common, streets, a fragment of
character-drawing which smiled visibly and talked audibly.
Elfrida in her garret drew a joy from these things. She
cut them out and read them over and over again, and put
them sacredly away, with Nadie's letters and a manuscript
poem of a certain Bruynotin's, and a scrawl from one
Hakkoff, with a vigorous sketch of herself, from memory,
in pen and ink in the corner of the page, in the little
eastern-smelling wooden box which seemed to her to
represent the core of her existence. They quickened her
pulse, they gave her a curious uplifted happiness that
took absolutely no account of any other circumstance.

There were days when Mrs. Jordan had real twinges of
conscience about the quality of Miss Bell's steak. "But
there," Mrs. Jordan would soothe herself, "I might bring
her the best sulline, and she wouldn't know no difference."
In other practical respects the girl was equally
indifferent. Her clothes were shabby, and she did not
seem to think of replacing them; Mrs. Jordan made
preposterous charges for candles, and she paid them
without question. She tipped people who did little services
for her with a kind of royal delicacy; the girl who
scrubbed the landings worshipped her, and the boy who
came every day for her copy once brought her a resplendent
"button-hole" consisting of two pink rosebuds and a
scarlet geranium, tendering it with a shy lie to the
effect that he had found it in the street. She went alone
now and again to the opera, taking an obscure place, and
she lived a good deal among the foreign art exhibitions
of Bond Street. Once she bought an etching and brought
it home under her arm. That kept her poor for a month,
though she would have been less aware of it if she had
not, before the month was out, wanted to buy another. A
great Parisian actress had made her yearly visit to