red by discreet interviews in dark studies filled with unspeakably
ugly and reassuringly solid furniture. Those doctors had patted her
hand, said she needed a little change or may be a tonic. At the Carew,
fed as it is by the misery of two square miles of North East London, the
revelation of pain was dazzling, apocalyptic. The sight of the benches
crowded with women and children--some pale as corpses, others flushed
with fever, some with faces bandaged or disfigured by sores--almost made
her sick. They were packed in serried rows; the children almost all
cried persistently, except here and there a baby, who looked with
frightful fixity at the glazed roof. From all this chattering crowd of
the condemned rose a stench of iodoform, perspiration, unwashed bodies,
the acrid smell of poverty.

The little red-haired Scotch doctor dismissed Victoria's case in less
than one minute.

'Varicose veins. Always wear a stocking. Here's your form. Settle terms
at the truss office. Don't stand on your feet. Oh, what's your
occupation?'

'Waitress at the P.R.R., Sir.'

'Ah, hum. You must give it up.'

'I can't, Sir.'

'It's your risk. Come again in a month.'

Victoria pulled up her stockings. Walking in a dream she went to the
truss office where a man measured her calves. She felt numb and
indifferent as to the exposure of her body. The man looked enquiringly
at the left calf.

'V.H. for the left,' he called over his shoulder to the clerk.

At twelve o'clock she was in the P.R.R., revived by the familiar
atmosphere. She even rallied one of the old chess players on a stroke of
ill-luck. Towards four o'clock her ankles began to twitch.

CHAPTER XXIV

THROUGH all these anxious times, Betty watched over Victoria with the
devotion that is born of love. There was in the girl a reserve of
maternal sweetness equalled only by the courage she showed every day.
Slim and delicate as she seemed, there was in Betty's thin body a
strength all nervous but enduring. She did not complain, though driven
eleven or twelve hours a day by the eyes of the manageress; those eyes
were sharp as a goad, but she went cheerfully.

In a sense Betty was happy. The work did not weigh too heavily upon her;
there was so much humility in her that she did not resent the roughness
of her companions. Nelly could snub her, trample at times on her like
the cart horse she was; the manageress too could freeze her with a look,
the kitchen staff disregard he