ced me home to my room.

Next day, I had no food at all, and in the evening I sprawled on the
bed. Then things happened.

The opposite room on the same landing had been let to a girl who worked,
so I understood from my hostess, at the cork factory close at hand. She
came home every evening at about six, and the little wretch invariably
had a hot meal with her tea. It was carried up from below. It was
carried past my door. I could not object to this, but I could and did
object to the odour remaining with me. Have you ever smelt Irish stew
after being sixteen hours without food? I say I objected. What I said
was: "Can't you keep that damn stink out of my room?" Landlady said she
was sorry; didn't know it annoyed me; but you couldn't keep food from
smelling, could you?

So I slammed the door. A little later came a timid tap. I was still
lying on the bed, picturing for myself an end in the manner of a youth
named Chatterton, but I slithered off to answer the knock. Before I
could do so, the door was pushed softly open, and Miss Cork Factory
pushed a soft head through it.

"Say, don't mind me, do you? But here, I know all about you. I been
watching you, and the old girl's told me, too. She given you notice?
Listen. I got a good old stew going in here. More'n enough for two. Come
on!"

What would you have done? I was seventeen; and she, I imagine, was about
twenty. But a girl of twenty is three times older than a boy of
seventeen. She commanded. She mothered. I felt infinitely childlike and
absurd. I thought of refusing; but that seemed an idiotic attempt at
dignity which would only amuse this very mature young person. To accept
seemed to throw away entirely one's masculinity. Somehow, I.... But she
stepped right into the room then, instinctively patting her hair and
smoothing herself, and she took me by the arm.

"Look here, now. Don't you go on this silly way; else you'll be a case
for the morchery. Noner your nonsense, now. You come right along in."
She flitted back, pulling me with her, to the lit doorway of her room, a
yellow oblong of warmth and fragrance. "Niff it?" she jerked in allusion
to the stew. I nodded; and then I was inside and the door shut.

She chucked me into a rickety chair by the dancing fire, and chattered
cheerily while she played hostess, and I sat pale and tried to recover
dignity in sulky silence.

She played for a moment or so over a large vegetable dish which stood in
the fender, and the