eet
of the children, like the pattering of rain, going off to the Board
School round the corner. And a little after four in the afternoon you
heard the wild cries of the juvenile community let loose from lessons,
the boys trundling iron hoops and the girls skipping to a measured tune
over a rope stretched from parapet to parapet.

After that, our street hummed like a bee-hive, with the women, washed
and combed, standing knitting at their open doors or exchanging
confidences across the areas until darkness fell and each of the mothers
called her children into bed, as an old hen in the farmyard clucks up
her chickens.

These good creatures were very kind to me. Having satisfied themselves
from observation of my habits that I was "respectable," they called me
"our lady"; and I could not help hearing that I was "a nice young
thing," though it was a little against me that I did not go to church or
chapel, and had confessed to being a Catholic--for several of our
families (including that of my landlady) were members of the Welsh Zion
Chapel not far away.

Such was the life of the little human cage to which I had confined
myself, but I had an inner life that was all my own and very sweet to
me.

During the long hours of every day in which I was alone I occupied
myself in the making of clothes for my baby--buying linen and flannel
and worsted, and borrowing patterns from my Welsh landlady.

This stimulated my tenderness towards the child that was to come, for
the heart of a young mother is almost infantile, and I hardly know
whether to laugh or cry when I think of the childish things I did and
thought and said to myself in those first days when I was alone in my
room in that back street in Bayswater.

Thus long before baby was born I had christened her. At first I wished
to call her Mary, not because I cared for that name myself, but because
Martin had said it was the most beautiful in the world. In the end,
however, I called her Isabel Mary (because Isabel was my mother's name
and she had been a far better woman than I was), and as I finished my
baby's garments one by one I used to put them away in their drawer,
saying to myself, "That's Isabel Mary's binder," or "Isabel Mary's
christening-robe" as the case might be.

I dare say it was all very foolish. There are tears in my eyes when I
think of it now, but there were none then, for though there were moments
when, remembering Martin, I felt as if life were for ever bl