erce he had slowly been ground
down. When Betty was seventeen he collapsed through worry and overwork.
His wife attempted to carry on the business after his death, bravely
facing the enemy, discharging assistants, keeping the books, impressing
Betty to dress the window, then to clean the shop. But the pressure had
become too great, and on the day when the mortgagees foreclosed she
died. Nothing was left for Betty except the clothes she stood in. Some
poor relatives in London induced her to join the 'Lethe.' That was three
years ago and now she was twenty.

Betty was the tall slim girl into whose breast Victoria had thrust her
elbow when they were fighting for bread among the crowd which surged
round the door of the Princes Street depot. She was pretty, perhaps a
little too delicately so. Her sandy hair and wide open china blue eyes
made one think of a doll; but the impression disappeared when one looked
at her long limbs, her slightly sunken cheeks. She had a sweet
disposition, so gentle that, though she was a favourite, her fellows
despised her a little and were inclined to call her 'poor Betty.' She
was nearly always tired; when she was well she was full of simple and
honest merriment. She would laugh then if a motor bus skidded or if she
saw a Highlander in a kilt. She had just been shifted to the Moorgate
Street P.R.R. From the first the two girls had made friends and Victoria
was deeply glad to meet her again. The depth of that gladness is only
known to those who have lived alone in a hostile world.

'Betty,' said Victoria the first morning, 'there's something I want to
say. I've had it on my mind. Do you remember the first time we met
outside the old P.R. in Princes Street?'

'Don't I?' said Betty. 'We had a rough time, didn't we?'

'We had. And, Betty, perhaps you remember . . . I hit you in the chest.
I've thought of it so often . . . and you don't know how sorry I am when
I think of it.'

'Oh, I didn't mind,' said Betty, a blush rising to her forehead, 'I
understand. I was about starving, you know, I thought you were the
same.'

'No, not starving exactly,' said Victoria, 'mad rather, terrified, like
a sheep which the dog's driving. But I beg your pardon, Betty, I
oughtn't to have done it.'

Betty put her hand gently on her companion's.

'I understand, Vic,' she said, 'it's all over now; we're friends, aren't
we?'

Victoria returned the pressure. That day established a tender link
between these two.