had to be put right.
She then found herself in a carpetless passage lit by gas flaming in a
wire cage; here, the smell of drains was even more offensive than
before. There was a half-open door on the right, from which came the
clatter of knives and plates. Mavis, believing that this was the
supper-room, went in.

She found herself in a large, low room, the walls of which were built
with glazed brick. Upon the left, the further wall receded as it
approached the ceiling, to admit, in daytime, the light that straggled
from the thick glass let into the pavement, on which the footsteps of
the passers-by were ceaselessly heard. The room was filled by a long
table covered by a scanty cloth, at which several pasty-faced,
unwholesome-looking young women were eating bread and cheese, the while
they talked in whispers or read from journals, books, or novelettes. At
the head of the table sat a dark, elderly little woman, who seemed to
be all nose and fuzzy hair: this person was not eating. Several of the
girls looked with weary curiosity at Mavis, while they mentally totted
up the price she had paid for her clothes; when they reached their
respective totals, they resumed their meal.

"Miss Keeth?" said the dark little woman at the head of the table, who
spoke with a lisp.

"Yes," replied Mavis.

"If you want thupper, you'll find a theat."

"Thank you."

Mavis sank wearily in the first empty chair. "Dawes'" had already got
on her nerves. She was sick at heart with all she had gone through;
from the depths of her being she resented being considered on an
equality with the two young women she had met and those she saw about
her. She closed her eyes as she tried to take herself, for a brief
moment, from her surroundings. She was recalled to the present by a
plate, on which was a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese, being thrust
beneath her nose. She was hungry when she came downstairs; now,
appetite had left her. Her gorge rose at the pasty-faced girls, the
brick-walled cellar, the unwholesome air, and the beady-eyed little
woman seated at the head of the table. She thought it better, if only
for her health's sake, to try and swallow something. She put a piece of
cheese in her mouth. Mavis, by now, was an authority on cheap cheese;
she knew all the varieties of flavour to be found in the lesser-priced
cheeses. Ordinarily, she had been enabled to make them palatable with
the help of vinegar, mustard, or even with an onion; but