ust be there early, for there will be a crush. Miss Craven
comes too? Excellent! I will tell the doorkeeper to look out for you.
Good-bye!--good-bye!"

And with a hasty shake of the hand to the Cravens, and one more keen
glance, first at Marcella and then round the little workman's room in
which they had been sitting, he went.

He had hardly departed before Anthony Craven, the lame elder brother,
who must have passed him on the stairs, appeared.

"Well--any news?" he said, as Marcella found him a chair.

"All right!" said Louis, whose manner had entirely changed since Wharton
had left the room. "I am to go down on Monday to report the Damesley
strike that is to be. A month's trial, and then a salary--two hundred a
year. Oh! it'll do."

He fidgeted and looked away from his brother, as though trying to hide
his pleasure. But in spite of him it transformed every line of the
pinched and worn face.

"And you and Anna will walk to the Registry Office next week?" said
Anthony, sourly, as he took his tea.

"It can't be next week," said Edith Craven's quiet voice, interposing.
"Anna's got to work out her shirt-making time. She only left the
tailoresses and began this new business ten days ago. And she was to
have a month at each."

Marcella's lifted eyebrows asked for explanations. She had not yet seen
Louis's betrothed, but she was understood to be a character, and a
better authority on many Labour questions than he.

Louis explained that Anna was exploring various sweated trades for the
benefit of an East End newspaper. She had earned fourteen shillings her
last week at tailoring, but the feat had exhausted her so much that he
had been obliged to insist on two or three days respite before moving on
to shirts. Shirts were now brisk, and the hours appallingly long in this
heat.

"It was on shirts they made acquaintance," said Edith pensively. "Louis
was lodging on the second floor, she in the third floor back, and they
used to pass on the stairs. One day she heard him imploring the little
slavey to put some buttons on his shirts. The slavey tossed her head,
and said she'd see about it. When he'd gone out, Anna came downstairs,
calmly demanded his shirts, and, having the slavey under her thumb, got
them, walked off with them, and mended them all. When Louis came home he
discovered a neat heap reposing on his table. Of course he
wept--whatever he may say. But next morning Miss Anna found her shoes
outside her door, bl