n be glorious enough to repay you
for all the exile?"

Bridget's wheedling voice broke in on my argument:--

"Miss Evelyn, dear, I've been thinking--wouldn't it be a duty-like, to
be having a bit of sun? Seems like we could wrestle along a bit better
if we faced the right way!"

Poor dear! Above all the drawbacks, it was the darkness of the
interiors of those small flats which most perplexed the good
countrywoman: the passages lighted only through the ground glass panels
of bedroom doors; the windows shadowed by walls of other buildings,
which towered up at but a few yards' distance; the kitchens staring
blankly into a "well," ornamented with the suggestive spirals of a
fire-escape.

"If we could maybe face somewhere where there was a bit of green!"
pleaded the eloquent Irish voice. "Sure the leddies and gentlemen you
are meaning to help--you'll be more likely to find them in the place
you'd choose yourself, if you were settling in earnest?" Bridget rolled
an eye at blocks E, F, and G of a colossal pile of buildings which
stretched their inky length over the two blocks of a narrow
thoroughfare. "Cast your eye over them window curtains!" said she
scathingly. "Ye can tell what's inside without troubling to look. A
dirty, idle set that will sponge on you, and laugh behind your back!"

I looked, and shuddered, and was thankfully convinced. In my efforts
not to aim too high, my standard had fallen impossibly low, and
Bridget's keen common sense had been right in prophesying that I was
more likely to find a congenial type of people in a neighbourhood which
appealed to my own taste.

No sooner said than done! I escorted Bridget to a restaurant, and fed
her and myself with lots of good hot food, and then straightway hired a
taxi, and drove back to the agents to demand addresses of flats a little
further afield, which should have at least a modicum of light and air.

It appeared that I had demanded the thing above all others for which
tens of thousands of other women were already clamouring!

"Everybody wants a cheap flat in an open and airy situation. For one
that is to let we have a hundred applicants. Of course, if you are
prepared to pay a long price--"

"But I am not."

"Quite so. Otherwise I have some fine sites in Campden Hill. Lift.
Central heating. Every convenience."

"Seventy pounds is the utmost--"

"Quite so. Then we must rule out Campden Hill, or Hampstead, or
Kensington." The agent