om to let was on the ground floor at the back of
the house; it was meagre, poorly furnished, but clean. Mavis paid a
week's rent in advance and was left to her own devices. For all the
presence of her baby and Jill, Mavis felt woefully alone. She bought,
and made a meal of bloater paste, bread, butter, and a bottle of stout,
to feel the better for it. She then telephoned to the station master at
New Cross, to whom she gave the address to which he could forward her
trunk. On her return from the shop where she had telephoned, she went
into a grocer's, where, for twopence, she purchased a small packing
case. With this she contrived to make a cradle for her baby, by
knocking out the projecting nails with a hammer borrowed from the
pimply-faced woman at her lodging. If the extemporised cradle lacked
adornment, it was adorable by reason of the love and devotion with
which she surrounded her little one. Her box arrived in the course of
the evening, when Mavis set about making the room look as homelike as
possible. This done, she made further inroads on her midday purchases
of bread and bloater paste, washed, fed her baby, and said her prayers
before undressing for the night. At ten o'clock, mother and child were
asleep.

Mavis had occupied her room for some days before she learned anything
of the house in which she lodged. It was kept by a Mr, Mrs, and Miss
Gussle, who lived in the basement. It was Miss Gussle who had opened
the door to Mavis on the day she came. Mrs Gussle was never seen. Mavis
heard from one source that she was always drunk; from another, that she
was a teetotaller and spent her time at devotions; from a third, that
she neither drank nor prayed, but passed the day in reading novelettes.
But it was Mr Gussle who appealed the most to Mavis's sense of
character. He was a wisp of a bald-headed, elderly man, who was
invariably dressed in a rusty black frockcoat suit, a not too clean
dicky, and a made-up black bow tie, the ends of which were tucked
beneath the flaps of a turned down paper collar. He had no business or
trade, but did the menial work of the house. He made the beds, brought
up the meals and water, laid the tables and emptied the slops; but,
while thus engaged, he never made any remark, and when spoken to
replied in monosyllables. The ground floor front was let to a
third-rate Hebraic music-hall artiste, who perfunctorily attended his
place of business. The second and third floors, and most of the top