But although Evarne would not have deemed it possible, worse still remained for her upon the knees of the gods.

Jean Brodie returned home one Sunday in a state of unconcealed excitement.

"Miss Stornway, I'm going to be married. The banns are to be called for the first time next Sabbath. My young man's regiment is going out to India in six weeks, and he's just got leave to marry 'on the strength,' so he can take me with him."

After suitable congratulations, and so on, the conversation veered round to Evarne.

"If you follow my advice, Miss Stornway, you'll carry on my business. You've done a lot of good work for me, my dear, so in memory of that I'll give you all—well, nearly all—the furniture of the room. I must take a few things with me, and I can't let you have my sewing-machine, but you can procure a nice one on the hire system. Then get a young girl as an apprentice. I'll introduce you to the City firm I work for, and you'll be comfortably settled. What do you say?"

Evarne naturally thanked her, whereupon Miss Brodie set forth the expenditure of the establishment.

"The work brings in above seventeen shillings weekly. Two shillings is enough to pay the apprentice, a young girl, you know. There's three-and-six for rent, add to which you must allow three-and-six for your machine, that's nine shillings. That leaves you with eight shillings for food for the two of you, candles, a bit of firing, the goose club, the church collection, twopence for a hot bath—everything else, in fact. It seems very little somehow! I know, it's the hiring of the machine takes your money. I've managed to save some every week, and so will you in time."

Thus the matter was settled. Evarne was present at Jean's marriage, and a few days later waved her farewell from the station as the good Scotswoman departed with the other soldiers' wives. Then the girl walked back to her now empty room with a fresh sense of depression. After all, Jean had been a friend in need, and had remained her only intimate acquaintance in London.

As she wended her way upstairs a sudden stumble was heard on the upper flight, and immediately after half a dozen rosy apples came bounding down. At the same time the disreputable Mrs. Harbert's voice was heard calling shrilly—

"'Ere, Smithkins! Come to the rescue! Buck up! Everything's a-goin'."

Thus abjured, Mrs. Smithkins hurried out from her room and lent her aid. Evarne, having gathered up the apples, joining the group.

"Here's something of yours," she said.

"Good retriever! 'Ave one," was the response.

Somewhat objecting to be thus described, the girl declined the gift, and was continuing her way upstairs.

"Wait a bit. I must give yer somethin' for yer trouble, me dear. I'll learn yer some cookin'. Best and quickest way to make a sausage roll. D'you know it?"

"No."

"Take a sausage to the top of the stairs and chuck it down—like them apples rolled. See? Ha, ha! Shakespeare! No, not 'im this time. That was the clown at the pantomime last year."

Evarne certainly thought the old dame was slightly incoherent, and smiling indulgently took another step upstairs.

"Done it!" declared Mrs. Harbert triumphantly.

"What 'ave yer done now?" inquired Mrs. Smithkins.

"Made 'er laugh! Said I would. I fair 'ate to see a glum look on a pretty face. You've lost yer friend, Miss Stornway. Now, won't yer come in an' 'ave a cosy cup o' tea along o' me?"

"An' see 'er wunnerful pictures," sniggered Mrs. Smithkins.

"Jist be off with yer. To the pure all things is white as wool. Shakespeare! Miss Stornway's a real laidy. She knows Shakespeare, I bet. You ask 'er."

All this certainly succeeded in distracting Evarne's mind.

"Thank you," she said. "I shall very much like to come."

The visit turned out very successful, though it was perforce but brief, as the girl had to be back at her labours again. Only by uninterrupted industry could the requisite number of blouses be finished, and Evarne, with only a few weeks' practice at machining, was far less rapid than had been Miss Brodie with her ten years' experience. Milly, the new fourteen-year-old apprentice, was clumsy and somewhat idle, so that there was now less time than ever in Evarne's life for protracted afternoon calls.

Day after day she worked with a will, and though at first her uttermost endeavours only brought in about fourteen-and-sixpence each week, she rapidly grew more skilful. Milly, too, became quicker and more useful, and things were thus promising to become decidedly easier when an unforeseen accident occurred. It was just one of those foolish little mishaps that nobody can always succeed in guarding against. This one was very unromantic in its origin. Evarne was seated on the side of one of the public baths, polishing and paring and generally attending to her pretty pink feet and nails, when somehow she lost her balance and fell. In saving herself from splashing half-dressed into the water, she contrived to drive the point of the scissors into her finger, right down to the bone.

It only left a little wound, which Mrs. Harbert tied up with a piece of rag, and although it was the right hand, the girl continued her work next day as if nothing had happened. But in the night the pain grew so bad that it awoke her and prevented her sleeping again, while the daylight showed the wounded finger to be ominously blue and swollen. This spread with terrible rapidity and ere long her hand was totally useless. Full of alarm she hurried off to the hospital, and had her suspicions of blood-poisoning confirmed. The poor hand was carefully bandaged up and put into a sling, and, almost overwhelmed by this new anxiety, the girl returned home to see what could be done about her work.

Everything now devolved upon Milly. Evarne contrived to cut out the blouses with her left hand, and to do a little tacking, but all else had to be left to the apprentice. Evarne could but encourage and supervise, and wearying work that proved. Even in these new circumstances Milly was still slow and idle, and if she was pressed to work faster, she ceased sewing altogether and whimpered.

Thus a miserable three shillings was all that could be earned in the first week, and the next six days showed an increase of but ninepence. Evarne had about half a sovereign laid by, and out of this she paid Milly's wages and the hire of the all-precious machine. But in the second week, when the landlord made his usual Monday rent-collecting visit, she was forced to beg his indulgence, showing her blue and bandaged hand as an excuse and explanation. At first he told her roughly enough that he did not run his houses as a philanthropic undertaking, and that if his tenants could not pay they just had to go. But finally he grew more sympathetic, and at last quite kind. He actually promised to take no steps whatsoever for a month, and if she stayed on after that she could make it up at the rate of a shilling a week.

She recovered the partial use of her hand in less than the stipulated time, and resumed her place at the machine. But she had now got thoroughly backward with money matters. Only by pawning everything in the room that was not absolutely essential could she pay both rent and machine hire, and the eight to ten shillings that was all her still crippled hand was able to earn seemed to be swallowed up immediately she received it. Only about eighteen-pence at the outside could she manage to retain to buy food for herself and her apprentice.

Now, Miss Milly was not particular, and had made few complaints at being reduced to a diet of potatoes and bread and scrape; tea made of leaves used a second time; rice boiled in water and sweetened by a little condensed milk, and so on. When, however, the quantity came to be also unpleasantly restricted her hearty appetite, unappeased, rendered her decidedly fractious.

Her honorarium had been reduced by Miss Stornway to a shilling weekly, on the promise that it should be more than made up later, but now she was apparently expected to spend even this miserable half-pay on sustaining life. True, Miss Stornway always took far the smaller portion of every meagre meal, but unfortunately even that fact did not fill the cavity in Milly's stomach. So the day came when that damsel, being entrusted with a penny and sent out to purchase an ounce of tea, returned no more. In the evening came a note:

"Dere Miss,

"i've gorn ome to my mother Because i wants more to eat. it aint your forlt miss nor it aint mine and mother Says its rite if you works ard you ort to ave Enuf to eat two shillings you Ows me dont trubble about miss Eat it.

"Yours respeckful,

"Milly."

Whether a sting or a kindness lay in the closing sentence, Evarne knew not, but all the statements in the letter were as clearly undeniable as was the fact that Milly had deserted her. She felt both ashamed and strangely forsaken, and crushing the scrap of paper in her hand, rested her pale cheek on the bare boards of the table, while tears of feebleness and helplessness rolled from her weary eyes and slowly soaked their way into the wood.

Hampered as she was by her still awkwardly swollen and painful hand, with those terrible debts clinging like leeches, and with the imperative need there had been for every penny that she and her assistant had earned by their united efforts, she could not conceive how she was possibly to manage without any help whatsoever. Milly might have stood by her a little longer, she thought sadly.

There was no chance of economising on anything save food, and to such lengths was she now forced to carry this disastrous self-denial, that the uninitiated might have supposed she was trying to solve the problem of how to live without eating. Naturally dainty, she had, in Jean's day, often left untouched much of the indifferent food provided. Now she consumed far rougher and more unpalatable meals to the last crumb with avidity, and once or twice even ignobly consumed what should have been her supper at the same time as her dinner.

She bravely persevered with her work, cutting-out and machining and stitching from early morning until darkness descended. Even then she continued her weary labours with the work held close up to the light of a guttering candle, until practical inability to see longer forced her to cease, to throw herself upon her bed and sleep.

But the night time brought very imperfect rest. Constantly she was awakened by the vividness of dreams of banquets; well-stored provision shops; food lying in the very gutter while people held her back from reaching it; boards lavishly spread, whence every dish faded immediately she thrust forth her hand to grasp its contents.

Scarcely ever did she leave the four bare walls of her room, save for necessary business. Not only had she neither time nor strength, but now the soles of her shoes were worn into great holes and her stockings were no longer mendable, so that her bare feet trod the pavement, and became bruised and blistered.

And every effort, additional to the day's routine, was to be avoided. Scarcely could she drag herself up of a morning, repeatedly would she find that the treadle of the machine was being worked slower and yet more slowly, as a dull stupor and inertness crept like a fog over her mind. Once she wasted a whole afternoon by fainting, and came to herself to find that nightfall had set in while she was lying unconscious upon the floor.

"I wonder if I'm going to die? Perhaps I ought to warn somebody or—or do something. I wonder?" She asked herself this question one late afternoon as she finished tying up the parcel of completed blouses, and found that she could not walk across the room with them without staggering and reeling.

She recalled a ghastly account she had read in the paper, of a man who had died in a locked-up flat, and was never discovered until his corpse decomposed and soaked through the floor to the ceiling below.

"Mrs. Harbert is just underneath me. I wonder if she would move if that happened?" Evarne grimly and wretchedly pondered as she commenced to descend the stairs.

Ere she was half-way down she suddenly stood still. What was happening? Why was there that vast yawning pit below? It wasn't real—no, she knew it—but all the same it made her dizzy. She grew blind, and her brain seemed to heave madly. Dropping her parcel, she pressed both hands over her eyes. Was she swaying to and fro, or were the stairs rocking beneath her feet? She made a wild clutch at the banisters, but her fingers closed only upon the air. She was falling—falling—yet could not save herself, and a scream of terror rang through the house ere unconsciousness closed in upon her, and she fell with a dull thud down to the landing below.