ye, he rode past me, laughing.

After that I took my walks in the poorer streets behind Bayswater, but
there I was forced back on my old problem, for I seemed to be always
seeing the sufferings of children.

Thank God, children as a whole are happy. They seem to live in their
hearts alone, and I really and truly believe that if all the doors of
the rich houses of the West End of London were thrown open to the poor
children of the East End they would stay in their slums and alleys.

But some of them suffer there for all that, especially the unfortunate
ones who enter the world without any legal right to be here, and I
seemed to be coming upon that kind everywhere.

One evening I saw a tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain under a
dripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his little heart
would break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but when a rather
shame-faced young woman came along, as if returning from her work, he
burst out on her and cried:

"Oh, muvver, she's been a-beating of me awrful."

"Never mind, Johnny," said the young woman, kneeling on the wet pavement
to dry the child's eyes. "Don't cry, that's a good boy."

It needed no second sight to look into the heart of that tragedy, and
the effect of it upon me was to make me curtail my expenditure still
further.

Looking back on those days I cannot but wonder that I never tried to
find employment. But there was one delicate impediment then--my
condition, which was becoming visible, I thought, to people in the
street, and causing some of them, especially women, to look round at me.
When this became painful I discontinued my walks altogether, and sent
Emmerjane on my few errands.

Then my room became my world.

I do not think I ever saw a newspaper. And knowing nothing of what was
going on, beyond the surge and swell of the life of London as it came to
me when I opened my window. I had now, more than ever, the sense of
living in a dungeon on a rock in the middle of the sea.

Having no exercise I ate less and less. But I found a certain joy in
that, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and the only pain
I suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did every day, and looked
at my rapidly diminishing store.

I knew that my Welsh landlady was beginning to call me _close_, meaning
mean; but that did not trouble me in the least, because I told myself
that every penny I saved out of my own expenses was for my child, to
keep h