two of
them with yellow labels--the result of Maggie's errand--and prepared
herself to face a somewhat riotous evening. But Christmas, she reflected
for her consolation, comes but once a year.

It was about nine o'clock that the two men and the one woman sat down to
supper upstairs. The children had been put to bed in the kitchen as
usual, after Jimmie had informed his mother that the clergyman had been
round no less than three times since four o'clock to inquire after the
vanished lodger. He was a little tearful at being put to bed at such an
unusually early hour, as Mr. Parham-Carter, it appeared, had promised
him no less than sixpence if he would come round to the clergy-house
within five minutes after the lodger's return, and it was obviously
impossible to traverse the streets in a single flannel shirt.

His mother dismissed it all as nonsense. She told him that Frankie was
not coming back at all--that he wasn't a good young man, and had run
away without paying mother her rent. This made the situation worse than
ever, as Jimmie protested violently against this shattering of his
ideal, and his mother had to assume a good deal of sternness to cover up
her own tenderness of feeling. But she, too--though she considered the
flight of the two perfectly usual--was conscious of a very slight sense
of disappointment herself that it should have been this particular young
man who had done it.

Then she went upstairs again to supper.

(III)

The famous archway that gives entrance to the district of Hackney Wick
seems, especially on a rainy night, directly designed by the Great
Eastern Railway as a vantage ground for observant loafers with a desire
to know every soul that enters or leaves Hackney Wick. It is, of course,
possible to, enter Hackney Wick by other ways--it may be approached by
the marshes, and there is, I think, another way round about half a mile
to the east, under the railway. But those ways have nothing whatever to
do with people coming from London proper. You arrive at Victoria Park
Station; you turn immediately to the right and follow the pavement down,
with the park on your left, until you come to the archway where the road
unites with that coming from Homerton. One is absolutely safe,
therefore, assuming that one has not to deal with watchful criminals, in
standing under the arch with the certitude that sooner or later, if you
wait long enough, the man whom you expect to enter Hackney Wick will
pass w