hen the cab turned a corner and,
with the suddenness of a stage effect, it carried its burden into the
haunts of darkness and malodour.

CHAPTER XI

'_Telegraph_, mum,' said a voice.

Victoria started up from the big armchair with a suddenness that almost
shot her out of it. It was the brother of the one in Portsea Place and
shared its constitutional objection to being sat upon. It was part of
the 'sweet' which Miss Briggs had divided with Mrs Bell when their
grandmother died.

'Thanks, Miss Briggs,' said Victoria. 'By the way, I don't think that
egg is quite fresh. And why does Hetty put the armchair in front of the
cupboard every day so that I can't open it?'

'The slut, I don't see there's anything the matter with it,' remarked
Miss Briggs, simultaneously endorsing the complaint against Hetty and
defending her own marketing.

'Oh, yes there is, Miss Briggs,' snapped Victoria with a sharpness which
would have been foreign to her some months before. 'Don't let it happen
again or I'll do my own catering.'

Miss Briggs collapsed on the spot. The profits on the three and sixpence
a week for 'tea, bread and butter and anything that's going,' formed
quite a substantial portion of her budget.

'Oh, I'm sorry, mum,' she said, 'it's Hetty bought 'em this week. The
slut, I'll talk to her.'

Victoria took no notice of the penitent landlady and opened the
_Telegraph_. She absorbed the fact that Consols had gone up an eighth
and that contangoes were in process of arrangement, without interest or
understanding. She was thinking of something else. Miss Briggs coughed
apologetically. Victoria looked up. Miss Briggs reflectively tied knots
in her apron string. She was a tall, lantern-jawed woman of no
particular age; old looking for thirty-five perhaps or young looking for
fifty. Her brown hair, plentifully sprinkled with grey, broke out in
wisps over each ear and at the back of the neck. Her perfectly flat
chest allowed big bags of coarse black serge to hang over her dirty
white apron. Her hands played mechanically with the strings, while her
water-coloured eye fixed upon the _Telegraph_.

'You shouldn't read that paper, mum,' she remarked.

'Why not?' asked Victoria, with a smile, 'isn't it a good one?'

'Oh, yes, mum, I don't say that,' said Miss Briggs with the respect that
she felt for the buyers of penny papers. 'There's none better. Mine's
the _Daily Mail_ of course and just a peep into _Reynolds_ before