as the other blossoms of
her heart, wandered disconsolately round her Walt's place of bondage,
waving a lily hand on the chance of being seen and recognised. Tactics
productive of nothing but blown kisses on the part of extra-susceptible
warders, and one or two troopers of the B.S.A., who ought to have known
better. These advances Walt's bereaved betrothed rejected with ringing
sniffs of scorn, yet, of such conflicting elements is the feminine heart
composed, found them strangely solacing.

She 'ad 'ad 'er month's notice from Sister Tobias upon the morning
following the night of the tragedy, another score to the account of the
traitor Keyse. Arriving unseemly late, and in an agitated state of
mind--and could you wonder, after her young man had been pinched and took
away?--she had mechanically accounted for her late return in the well-worn
formula of Kentish Town, explaining to the surprised Sisters that there
'ad bin a haccident on the Underground between the Edgeware Road and
'Ammersmiff, an' that her sister Hemmaline had bin took bad in
consequence, the second being looked for at the month's end; and to leave
that pore dear in that state--her 'usband being at his Social Club--was
more than Emigration Jane 'ad 'ad the 'art to do. She received her
dismissal to bed, and the advice to examine her conscience carefully
before retiring, with defiance, culminating in an attack of whooping
hysteria. Nor was she repentant, but defiantly elated by the knowledge
that nobody had slept in the Convent that night, until she had run down.
The character supplied by Sister Tobias to her next employer specified
terminological inexactitude among her failings, combined with lack of
emotional self-control; but laid stress on an affectionate disposition,
and a tendency to intermittent attacks of hard work.

She was now, with her new mistress and the kids, pigging--you couldn't
call it nothink else, not to be truthful you couldn't--at the Women's
Laager, along of them there dirty Dutch frows. She refrained from too
candid criticism of her Walt's countrywomen, but it was proper 'ard all
the same not to call crock and muck by their right names!

Languishing in seclusion, week and week about, cooking scant meals of the
Commissariat beef, moistened with gravy made from them patent packets of
Consecrated Soup, can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against W.
Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most actively potential in the
joggin