this green stuff to carry back
again."

"Can't you take it to her?" asked the young woman more gently.

"I don't know where she has gone to. Australia most likely."

"Australia, indeed! She has only gone to the other end of the street,
No. 103. And when you can't pay your rent, and three weeks running on
to four, what can you expect from your landlord?"

The door was closed, and Mrs. Rowles left standing on the step,
greatly shocked and agitated. Had the Mitchells been turned out by
their landlord for not paying their rent? Had they grown dishonest?
Had Mitchell taken to drink? What could it mean?

"No. 103. And this is only 42; the odd numbers are on the other side.
I must cross. What a lot of rubbish on the road; and do you think I
would let my girl stand out bareheaded like that, gossiping with a lot
of idle young chaps?" Thus thinking and moralizing Mrs. Rowles went
down the street towards the eastern end of it.

She noticed the change in the houses. Their fronts grew narrower;
there was a storey less; the door-steps were not hearth-stoned; the
area railings were broken. No white curtains, or but few and soiled
ones; hardly a flower; windowpanes filled with brown paper instead of
glass; doors standing half open; heaps of cinders and refuse lying at
the edge of the pavement; girls almost without frocks nursing dirty,
white-faced babies. It seemed a long way to No. 103. No. 99 stood out
from its fellows, and marked the point at which the street became
narrower, dirtier, noisier than before. Was it possible that Edward
Rowles's sister could be living here?

The comely, well-clad woman from Littlebourne looked into the entry of
No. 103. She saw a narrow passage, without floorcloth or carpet; a
narrow, dirty staircase led up to the rooms above. From the front room
on the ground floor came the whirring sound of a sewing-machine; it
might perhaps be Mary Mitchell at work.

Mrs. Rowles knocked on the door of the room.

"Who's there?"

"Please, does Mrs. Mitchell live here?"

"Top floor, back," replied the voice, and the whirr was resumed.

Picking her way, for the stairs were thick with mud from dirty boots
and with droppings from pails, beer-cans, and milk-jugs, Mrs. Rowles
went up the first flight. In the front room a woman's voice was
scolding in strong language; in the back room a baby was wailing
piteously. On the next floor one door stood open, revealing a bare
room, with filthy and torn wall-paper, wi