e.

'Mrs. Byass, will you let me have one room--my old room upstairs? I
have been very happy there, and I should like to stay if I can. You
know what I can earn; can you afford to let me live there? I'd do my
utmost to help you in the house; I'll be as good as a servant, if you
can't keep Sarah. I should so like to stay with you!'

'You just let me hear you talk about leaving, that's all! Wait till
I've talked it over with Sam.'

Jane went upstairs, and for the rest of the day the house was very
quiet.

Not Whitehead's; there were other places where work might be found. And
before many days she had found it. Happily there were no luxuries to be
laid aside; her ordinary dress was not too good for the workroom. She
had no habits of idleness to overcome, and an hour at the table made
her as expert with her fingers as ever.

Returning from the first day's work, she sat in her room--the little
room which used to be hers--to rest and think for a moment before going
down to Bessie's supper-table. And her thought was:

'He, too, is just coming home from work. Why should my life be easier
than his?'

CHAPTER XXXIX

SIDNEY

Look at a map of greater London, a map on which the town proper shows
as a dark, irregularly rounded patch against the whiteness of suburban
districts, and just on the northern limit of the vast network of
streets you will distinguish the name of Crouch End. Another decade,
and the dark patch will have spread greatly further; for the present,
Crouch End is still able to remind one that it was in the country a
very short time ago. The streets have a smell of newness, of dampness;
the bricks retain their complexion, the stucco has not rotted more than
one expects in a year or two; poverty tries to hide itself with
venetian blinds, until the time when an advanced guard of houses shall
justify the existence of the slum.

Characteristic of the locality is a certain row of one-storey
cottages--villas, the advertiser calls them--built of white brick, each
with one bay window on the ground floor, a window pretentiously
fashioned and desiring to be taken for stone, though obviously made of
bad plaster. Before each house is a garden, measuring six feet by
three, entered by a little iron gate, which grinds as you push it, and
at no time would latch. The front-door also grinds on the sill; it can
only be opened by force, and quivers in a way that shows how
unsubstantially it is made. As you set foot in