f shaky chairs and a box, a sharp featured woman sat
working a machine, as if for dear life. The heat of the room was made
hotter by the little grate in which a fire had recently been burning and
on which still stood the teapot. Some cups and a plate or two, with a cut
loaf of bread and a jam tin of sugar, littered the table. The scanty bed
was unmade. The woman wore a limp cotton dress of uncertain colour,
rolled up at the sleeves and opened at the neck for greater coolness. She
was thin and sharp; she was so busy you understood that she had no time
to be clean and tidy. She seemed pleased to see Nellie and totally
indifferent at seeing Ned, but kept on working after nodding to them.

Nellie motioned Ned to sit down, which he did on the edge of the bed, not
caring to trust the shaky chairs. She went to the side of the
sharp-featured woman, and sitting down on the foot of the bed by the
machine watched her working without a word. Ned could see on the ground,
in a paper parcel, a heap of cloth of various colours, and on the bed
some new coats folded and piled up. On the machine was another coat,
being sewn.

It was ten minutes before the machine stopped, ten minutes for Ned to
look about and think in. He knew without being told that this miserable
room was the home of the three children to whom Nellie had given the
pennies, and that here their mother worked to feed them. Their feeding he
could see on the table. Their home he could see. The work that gave it to
them he could see. For the first time in his life he felt ashamed of
being an Australian.

Finally the machine stopped. The sharp-faced woman took the coat up, bit
a thread with her teeth, and laying it on her knee began to unpick the
tackings.

"Let me!" said Nellie, pulling off her gloves and taking off her hat. "We
came to see you, Ned and I," she went on with honest truthfulness,
"because he's just down from the bush, and I wanted him to see what
Sydney was like. Ned, this is Mrs. Somerville."

Mrs. Somerville nodded at Ned. "You're right to come here," she remarked,
grimly, getting up while Nellie took her place as if she often did it.
"You know just what it is, Nellie, and I do, too, worse luck. Perhaps
it's good for us. When we're better off we don't care for those who're
down. We've got to get down ourselves to get properly disgusted with it."

She spoke with the accent of an educated woman, moving to the make-shift
table and beginning to "tidy-up." A