ROSSETTI.

There are some natures which cannot live with any happiness in drab
surroundings. Atmosphere affects everyone more or less; but whereas
there are a few fortunate ones who can rise triumphant to a certain
contentment through squalor and ugliness, there are a great many more
who find even cheerfulness very hard to attain to under like
circumstances.

The shut-in dinginess of Digby Street, the gloomy aspect of Shamrock
House, cast such a chill across Joan's spirits that, as she stood
hesitating with her hand on the bell, the instinct came to her to
scramble back into the cab and tell the man to drive her anywhere away
from such a neighbourhood. Of course it was absurd, and the cabman did
not look as if he would be in the least willing to comply. He had
treated her with a supercilious disbelief in there being any tip for him
as soon as he had heard of her destination. Joan had gone to Victoria
Station to collect her luggage, and it had been both late and dark
before the need for a cab had arisen. She had elected not to leave the
hospital till after tea; somehow, when it had come near to going, her
courage, which she had been bolstering up with hope and promises of what
she should do in her new life, had vanished into thin air. Perhaps more
than anything else she lacked the physical strength which would have
enabled her to look cheerfully into the future. The hospital had been a
place of refuge, she hated to leave it.

This feeling grew upon her more and more as she sat back in a corner of
the cab while it rumbled along the Vauxhall Bridge Road. There seemed
always to be a tram passing, huge giant vehicles that shook the earth
and made a great deal of noise in their going. The houses on either side
were dingy, singularly unattractive-looking buildings, and the further
the cab crawled away from Victoria Street the deeper the shade of
poverty and dirt that descended on the surroundings. Digby Street and
Shamrock House were the culminating stroke to Joan's depression.

Miss Abercrombie had written recommending it to her as a Girls' Club
where she would probably get companionship and advice on the question of
work. "You won't like it," she had added, "but it is very conveniently
situated and ridiculously cheap." So Joan had described her destination
to the cabman as a ladies' club, somewhere in Digby Street. He had
answered with a sniff, for it was here that he had lost sight of his
tip, that he supposed she mea