y was heard again and yet again. It sounded to Mavis
like some wounded animal being tortured beyond endurance. The cries
continued, to seem louder when a door was opened, and to be
correspondingly deadened when this was closed. Mavis shuddered;
anticipation of the torment she would have to endure chilled the blood
in her veins; cold shivers coursed down her back. It was as if she were
imprisoned in a house of pain, from which she could only escape by
enduring the most poignant of all torture inflicted by nature on
sensitive human bodies. The cries became continuous. Mavis placed her
fingers in her ears to shut them out. For all this precaution, a scream
of pain penetrated to her hearing. A few moments later, when she had to
use her hands in order to prevent Jill from jumping on to her lap, she
did not hear a sound. Some quarter of an hour later, Mrs Gowler
descended the stairs.

"A quick job that," she remarked to Mavis, who did not make any reply.
"Let's 'ope you'll be as sharp," added the woman, as she disappeared
into the kitchen.

Mavis gathered from these remarks that a mother had been delivered of a
child during Mrs Gowler's brief sojourn upstairs. The latter confirmed
this surmise by saying a little later, when she issued from the kitchen
drying her hands and bared arms on a towel:

"The worst of these here nursing 'omes is that yer never knows when
you're going to be on the job. I didn't expect Liz till termorrer."

Mavis made no reply.

"Would you like a glass of stout?" asked Mrs Gowler.

"No, thank you."

"I'm going to open another bottle an' thought you'd join, jes' friendly
like, as you might say. What with the work an' the 'eat of the kitchen,
I tell yer, I can do with it."

"I'm tired of sitting in this horrible passage. I wish you would show
me to my room."

"Wait till it's ready," retorted Mrs Gowler, angry at her hospitality
being refused.

"It ought to be ready. What else did I arrange to come for?"

"You can go up if you like, but Mrs May is bathing her baby, an'
there's no room to move."

"Does--does that mean that you haven't given me a room to myself?"
cried Mavis.

"Wot more d'ye expect for wot you're payin'?"

Mavis made up her mind.

"If you don't give me a room to myself, I shall go," declared Mavis.

"And 'ave yer baby in the street?"

"That's my affair."

Mavis rose as if to make good her words.

Seeing that she was in earnest, Mrs Gowler said:

"Don't be a mug. I