n uprose, with flaming face and straying hair, and
set a large plate of real hot stuff before me on the small table.
"_There_ you are, me old University chum!" served as her invitation to
the feast. She shot knife, fork, and spoon across the table with a neat
shove-ha'p'ny stroke. Bread followed with the same polite service, and
then she settled herself, squarely but very prettily, before her own
plate, mocking me with twinkling eyes over her raised spoon.

Her grace was terse but adequate: "Well--here's may God help us as we
deserve!" I dipped my spoon, lifted it with shaking hand, my heart
bursting to tell the little dear girl what I thought about her, my lips
refusing to do anything of the sort; refusing, indeed, to do anything at
all; for having got the spoon that far, I tried to swallow the good
stuff that was in it, and--well ... I ... I burst into tears. Yes, I
did.

"What the devil----" she jerked. "Now what the devil's the matter
with---- Oh, I know. I see."

"I can't help it," I hiccuped. "It's the st-st-st-stew! It's so
goo-goo-good!"

"There, that's all right, kid. I know. I been like that. You have a
stretch of rotten luck, and you don't get nothing for perhaps a day, and
you feel fit to faint, and then at last you get it, and when you got it,
can't touch it. Feel all choky, like, don't you? I know. You'll be all
right in a minute. Get some more into you!"

I did. And I was all right. I sat by her fire for the rest of the
evening, and smoked her cigarettes--twelve for a penny. And we talked;
rather good talk, I fancy. As the food warmed me, so I came out of my
shell. And gradually the superior motherliness of my hostess
disappeared; I was no longer abject under her gaze; I no longer felt
like a sheepish schoolboy. I saw her as what she really was--a pale,
rather fragile, very girlish girl. We talked torrentially. We broke into
one another's sentences without apology. We talked simultaneously. We
hurled autobiography at each other....

That was my last week in Kingsland Road; for luck turned, and I found
work--of a sort. I left on the Saturday. I parted from her at Cudgett
Street corner. I never asked her name; she never asked mine. She just
shook hands, and remarked, airily, "Well, so long, kid. Good luck."

A MUSICAL NIGHT

THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES

_AT THE PIANO_

_Cane chairs, a sleek piano, table and bed in a room
Lifted happily high from the loud street's fermentatio