eir transit through our kitchen that only one or two,
conspicuous by reason of their lingering, remain upon my view. It was a
neighbourhood in which domestic servants were not much required. Those
intending to take up the calling seriously went westward. The local
ranks were recruited mainly from the discontented or the disappointed,
from those who, unappreciated at home, hoped from the stranger more
discernment; or from the love-lorn, the jilted and the jealous, who took
the cap and apron as in an earlier age their like would have taken the
veil. Maybe, to the comparative seclusion of our basement, as contrasted
with the alternative frivolity of shop or factory, they felt in such
mood more attuned. With the advent of the new or the recovery of the old
young man they would plunge again into the vain world, leaving my poor
mother to search afresh amid the legions of the cursed.

With these I made such comradeship as I could, for I had no child
friends. Kind creatures were most of them, at least so I found them.
They were poor at "making believe," but would always squeeze ten minutes
from their work to romp with me, and that, perhaps, was healthier for
me. What, perhaps, was not so good for me was that, staggered at
the amount of "book-learning" implied by my conversation (for the
journalistic instinct, I am inclined to think, was early displayed in
me), they would listen open-mouthed to all my information, regarding me
as a precocious oracle. Sometimes they would obtain permission to take
me home with them to tea, generously eager that their friends should
also profit by me. Then, encouraged by admiring, grinning faces, I would
"hold forth," keenly enjoying the sound of my own proud piping.

"As good as a book, ain't he?" was the tribute most often paid to me.

"As good as a play," one enthusiastic listener, an old greengrocer, went
so far as to say.

Already I regarded myself as among the Immortals.

One girl, a dear, wholesome creature named Janet, stayed with us for
months and might have stayed years, but for her addiction to strong
language. The only and well-beloved child of the captain of the
barge "Nancy Jane," trading between Purfleet and Ponder's End, her
conversation was at once my terror and delight.

"Janet," my mother would exclaim in agony, her hands going up
instinctively to guard her ears, "how can you use such words?"

"What words, mum?"

"The things you have just called the gas man."

"Him! We