catechism.

I was trembling lest he should make intimate inquiries, but beyond
asking my name, and whether I was a Christian, he did not concern
himself with personal questions.

"Vat vages do you vant?" he asked.

I told him I should be pleased to take whatever was paid to other girls
doing work of the same kind.

"Ach no! Dese girls are full-timers. You are only a greener [meaning a
beginner] so you vill not expect anything like so much."

At that his daughter repeated her assurance that I was quicker than the
girl she had called Leah; but the Jew, with an air of parental majesty,
told her to be silent, and then said that as I was an "improver" he
could only take me "on piece," naming the price (a very small one) per
half-dozen buttons and buttonholes, with the condition that I found my
own twist and did the work in my own home.

Seeing that I should be no match for the Jew at a bargain, and being so
eager to get to work at any price, I closed with his offer, and then he
left the room, after telling me to come back the next day.

"And vhere do you lif, my dear?" said the Jewess.

I told her Bayswater, making some excuse for being in the East End, and
getting as near to the truth as I dare venture, but feeling
instinctively, after my sight of the master of the house, that I dared
say nothing about my child.

She told me I must live nearer to my work, and I said that was exactly
what I wished to do--asking if she knew where I could find a room.

Fortunately the Jewess herself had two rooms vacant at that moment, and
we went upstairs to look at them.

Both were at the top of the house, and one of them I could have for two
shillings a week, but it was dark and cheerless, being at the back and
looking into the space over the yards in which the tenants dried their
washing on lines stretched from pulleys.

The other, which would cost a shilling a week more, was a lean slit of a
room, very sparsely furnished, but it was to the front, and looked down
into the varied life of the street, so I took it instantly and asked
when I could move in.

"Ven you like," said the Jewess. "Everyding is ready."

So, early next morning I bade farewell to my good Welsh landlady (who
looked grave when I told her what I was going to do) and to Emmerjane
(who cried when I kissed her smudgy face) and, taking possession of my
new home, began work immediately in my first and only employment.

Perhaps it was a deep decline after the s