believe father has been to
Lambeth, but he and I do not speak on the subject. Paula, for some
reason, avoids me.'

It was one of several letters that arrived that morning. After opening
two appeals from charitable institutions, Mrs. Ormonde found an
envelope which, from the handwriting upon it, she judged to be a
similar communication from a private source. The address was
laboriously scrawled, and ill-spelt; the postage stamp was badly
affixed; there were finger-marks on the back. Such envelopes generally
came from the parents of children who had been in the Home, and
frequently--dirtiness announced such cases--made appeal for temporary
assistance. The present missive, however, was misleading; its contents
proved to be these:

'Madam,--We have a young girl with us as lies very bad. She come to us
not more than three week ago and asked for ployment, and me and my
husband wasn't unwilling for to give her a chance, seeing she looked
respectable, though we thought it wasn't unlikely as there might be
something wrong, because of her looks and her clothing, which wasn't
neither of them like the girl out of work, and then it's true she
couldn't give no reference. And now she's had fainting fits, and lies
very bad, having broke two dishes with falling, and which of course she
couldn't help, and we don't say as she could. My husband told me as I
ought for to look in her pocket, and which I did, and there I found a
envelope as had wrote your name and address on it. So I take the
liberty of writing, and which I am not much of a scholar, because she
do lie very bad, and if so be she has friends, they had ought to know.
I do what I can for her, but I have the customers to tend to, because
we keep a coffee-shop, which you'll find it at Number seventeen, Bank
Street, off the Caledonian Road. And I beg to end. From yours obedient,

SARAH GANDLE.'

There could be little doubt who this young girl was. Bad spelling and
worse writing rendered the letter difficult to translate into English,
but from the first sentence Mrs. Ormonde thought of Thyrza Trent. The
description would apply to Thyrza, and Thyrza might by some chance have
kept in her pocket the address which, as Mrs. Ormonde knew, Bunce had
given her when she brought Bessie to Eastbourne.

Her first emotion was of joy. This was quickly succeeded by doubts and
fears in plenty, for it was difficult to explain Thyrza's taking such a
step as this letter suggested. But the co