't
worry over references if you do that--and I went to some hire-purchase
people for furniture. Then I bought a kettle at the sixpenny halfpenny
shop, and a cup and saucer and plate in the next street, where the
barrows are. By the time I had got curtains and some sheets and one or
two odd things like a lamp, there were only a few shillings left." She
looked up seriously. "You wouldn't think till you try how expensive
furnishing is; but I was so proud of my little home. I am still; and you
know, when you've a place of your own, if you only have bread and milk
no one is any the wiser. I've often been hard up since, but I've always
managed to scrape up the rent and the hire-purchase instalment. One must
do that; they don't give you a day's grace."

Jimmy was chewing savagely at the ends of his moustache. It never
entered into his head that she was trying to play upon his sympathies.
There was some curious quality of simplicity in her manner which forbade
that supposition. She interested him as no woman had ever interested him
before, and, suddenly, he was filled with a desire to know her past,
and, in that, to find excuses for the present.

"Where do you come from?" he asked.

"Hampshire," she answered, adding, "My people are dead. I'm quite alone
in the world." Then, as if to change the subject, she got up from her
seat. "You must have a look round my tiny place."

Jimmy felt almost guilty as he noted her obvious pride in the few little
articles she had collected together. May's cook would have rejected with
scorn the kettle from the sixpenny halfpenny bazaar, and the one or two
pots and pans which had since been bought at the same shop; whilst none
of the Marlow servants would have deigned to use the thick earthenware
plates on the dresser. Yet everywhere there was a perfect cleanliness,
which, possibly, those same servants would never have succeeded in
attaining in the smoke-laden atmosphere of that street.

"I do hate dirt and untidiness," Lalage explained when he made a remark
on the subject. "I do everything myself, except the scrubbing; and I
wouldn't have a woman in for that if it wasn't for my hands; I want to
keep them nice."

She held them out for Jimmy to inspect, with the first touch of vanity
he had seen in her. Perhaps, her pride was justifiable, for they were
well worth looking at, being small and perfectly shaped. She wore no
rings, nor, for the matter of that, any jewellery at all, whilst her
dres