it out again till it's done something:
that's what it's 'ere for."

He stood over her with his handkerchief pressed against her mouth to
assist her; but it was of no use.

"There don't seem any room for it inside me," she explained.

Bells had become to her the business of life; she lived listening
for them. Converse to her was a filling in of time while waiting for
interruptions.

A bottle of whiskey fell into my hands that Christmas time, a present
from a commercial traveller in the way of business. Not liking whiskey
myself, it was no sacrifice for me to reserve it for the occasional
comfort of Mrs. Peedles, when, breathless, with her hands to her side,
she would sink upon the chair nearest to my door. Her poor, washed-out
face would lighten at the suggestion.

"Ah, well," she would reply, "I don't mind if I do. It's a poor heart
that never rejoices."

And then, her tongue unloosened, she would sit there and tell me stories
of my predecessors, young men lodgers who like myself had taken her
bed-sitting-rooms, and of the woes and misfortunes that had overtaken
them. I gathered that a more unlucky house I could not have selected.
A former tenant of my own room, of whom I strangely reminded her, had
written poetry on my very table. He was now in Portland doing five years
for forgery. Mrs. Peedles appeared to regard the two accomplishments as
merely different expressions of the same art. Another of her young men,
as she affectionately called us, had been of studious ambition. His
career up to a point appeared to have been brilliant. "What he mightn't
have been," according to Mrs. Peedles, there was practically no saying;
what he happened to be at the moment of conversation was an unpromising
inmate of the Hanwell lunatic asylum.

"I've always noticed it," Mrs. Peedles would explain; "it's always the
most deserving, those that try hardest, to whom trouble comes. I'm sure
I don't know why."

I was glad on the whole when that bottle of whiskey was finished. A
second might have driven me to suicide.

There was no Mr. Peedles--at least, not for Mrs. Peedles, though as an
individual he continued to exist. He had been "general utility" at
the Princess's--the old terms were still in vogue at that time--a fine
figure of a man in his day, so I was given to understand, but one easily
led away, especially by minxes. Mrs. Peedles spoke bitterly of general
utilities as people of not much use.

For working days Mrs. Peedl