Mrs. Sarah Jane Watts, better known to society and society's guardians by the cognomen of Mother Watts, kept a lodging-house in Kent Street. They who know where Kent Street, Borough is, and what Kent Street is like by night and day, can readily imagine that the establishment of Mrs. Watts was not a large one, or the prices likely to be high. Mrs. Watts' house, in fact, belonged not to Kent Street proper, but formed No. 2 of a cut-throat-looking court, crossing Kent Street at right angles. Here beds, or shares of beds, or shelves arranged horizontally under beds, were let out at twopence per head, or three-halfpence without the blankets, which were marked, "Stop Thief!"

Whether Mrs. Watts did badly with her business, or whether business prospered with her, it was difficult to determine by the landlady's external appearance, Mrs. W. being ever in rags, ever full of complaints and—drink. "Times" were always hard with her—the police were hard with her—her Kent Street contemporaries were hard with her—didn't treat her fair, undersold her, put more in a bed and charged less—"split upon her when things weren't on the square. Kent Street wasn't what it was when she was a gal!"

People constantly breathing the same atmosphere may notice a change in the "surroundings," but to common observers, or prying people paying occasional visits to this place, Kent Street seems ever the same—an eye-sore to public gaze, a satire on parish cleanliness and care, a disgrace to parish authorities in general, and landlords and ground landlords in particular.

Ever to common eyes the same appearances in Kent Street. The bustle of a cheap trade in its shops; the knots of thieves and loose-livers at every narrow turning; the murmurs of unseen disputants, in the true London vernacular, welling from dark entries and up-stairs rooms; the shoals of children, hatless, shoeless, almost garmentless—all a medley of sights and sounds, increasing towards night-fall, when Kent Street is full of horror, and lives and purses are not safe there.

It is eleven in the evening of the same day, in which our story opens, and Mrs. Sarah Jane Watts, baggy as regards costume, and unsteady as regards her legs, was standing in the doorway of her domicile, inspecting, by the light of the candle in her hand, a trinket of some kind, which had been proffered her by a smaller mortal, infinitely more ragged than herself.

"You got it honestly—I takes your word for it—you allers was a gal who spoke the truth, I will say that for you—it's a sham affair, and brassy as a knocker—say eightpence?"

"It's really gold, Mrs. Watts—it's worth a heap of money."

"It's the brassiest thing that ever I clapped eyes on—say eightpence and a bit of supper?"

"What sort o' supper?"

"Hot supper—tripe and inguns—as much as you can pad with."

"It's worth a sight more, if it's gold."

"I'll ask Simes—go up-stairs and wait a minit'—Simes'll tell us if it's gold, and praps stand more for it. I don't want the thing—I don't think it's safe to keep, myself; and if you've prigged it, Mattie, why, you'd better let it go."

"Very well."

Mattie—the girl whom we have watched in the dark entry of Mr. Wesden's door, wearied out with Mrs. Watts' loquacity, or overpowered by her arguments, went up-stairs into a room on the first floor. A long, low-ceilinged room, containing three beds, and each bed containing four women and a few supplementary children, one affected with a whooping-cough that was evidently fast racking it to death. This was the feminine dormitory of Mrs. Watts—a place well known to London women in search of a night's rest, Southwark way—a place for the ballad singer who had twopence to spend, or a soul above the workhouse; for the beggar-women who had whined about the streets all day; for the tramps passing from Surrey to Essex, and taking London en route; for women of all callings, who were deplorably poor, idle or vicious—it mattered not, so that they paid Mrs. Watts her claim upon them.

Mattie sat down by the fire, and began shivering with more violence than had characterized her in the cold and fog. The disturbed shadow, flung by the fire-light—the only light there—on the wall, shivered and danced grotesquely in the rear. No one took notice of the new-comer—although more than one woman lay awake in the background. A wrinkled hag, reposing with her basket of stay-laces under her head for security's sake, winked and blinked at her for a while, and then went off into a disjointed snore—the young mother with the sick child, sat up in her share of the bed, and rocked the coughing infant backwards and forwards, till her neighbour, with an oath, swore at her for letting the cold in; then all was as Mattie had found it upon entering.

Presently Mrs. Watts returned, candle in hand, smelling more aromatically of something hot and strong than ever.

"Simes says it's brass, and worth eightpence, and here's the money. Strike me dead, if he said more than eightpence, there!—strike him blind, if he'll get a farden out of it!"

"Where's the money?"

"Here's fippence—tuppence for to-night, and a penny you owe me, that makes eightpence; and as for supper, why, I'll keep my word—no one can ever say of Mother Watts that she didn't keep her word in anythink she undertooked."

"I—I don't care so much about supper as I did—ain't I just husky? No singing to-morrow, mother."

"Only singing small," was the rejoinder with a grunt at her own wit; "you'd do better picking up brooches—you was allers clever with your fingers, mind you. I only wish I'd been 'arf as sharp when I was young."

"I—I only wish I hadn't—found the thing," commented the girl, sorrowfully.

"Well, I'm blest!"

Mrs. Watts was taking off the lid of her saucepan, and probing the contents with a fork.

"Fippence isn't a fortun, and the young chap gave me a ha-penny once when I was singing in Suffolk Street—I didn't mean it, somehow—I said I never would again! Don't you remember when mother died here, how she went on just at the last as to what was to become o' me; and didn't I say I'd grow up good, and stick to singing and begging, and all that fun—or go to the workus—or anythink?"

"Ah! your mother was a fine 'un to go on sometimes."

"And then I——"

"Now, I don't want to hear anythink about your goings on—I don't know where you found that brassy brooch—I don't want to know—Simes don't want to know! We takes your word for it, that it was come by proper, and the less you say about it, the better; and the sooner you turns into bed, if you don't want no supper, the better too."

"I don't see a good twopen'orth over there," commented Mattie; "they're as full as ever they can stick."

"Take the rug, gal, and have it all to yourself, here by the fire."

"Well, it's not so bad. I say—you know old Wesden?"

"What, in Suffolk Street?—well."

"He's got a party to-night—I have been a listening to the music—they've been dancing and all manner. And laughing—my eye! they just have been a-laughing, Mother Watts—I've been laughing myself to hear 'em."

"Um," was the unsympathetic response.

"It's a buff-day—Wesden's gal's buff-day. You know Wesden's gal—proud of herself rather, and holds her head up in furst-rate style, as well she may with such a shop as her father's got in Suffolk Street, and good and pretty as she is, Lor bless her! I s'pose old Wesden's worth pounds and pounds now?"

"Hundreds."

"Hundreds and hundreds of pounds," commented Mattie, coiling herself in the rug upon the floor; "ah! I s'pose so. I often thinks, do you know, I should like to be Wesden's little gal—what a lucky thing it'd be to be turned somehow into Wesden's little gal, just at Christmas time, when fairies are about."

"What!"

"Real fairies, on course—not the gals with the legs in the pantermines. If there was any real fairies on course too, but I'm too knowing to b'lieve that. But if there was, I'd say, please turn me into Wesden's little gal, and give me the big doll by the parler door, and dress me like a lady in a blue meriner."

"Well, you are going on nicely about Wesden's gal. That was allus your fault, Mattie—such a gal to jaw, jaw, jaw—such a clapper, clapper, clapper about everythink and everybody."

"I was just a-thinking that I was going it rather, but I ain't a bit sleepy, and I thought you wouldn't mind me while you was having your supper, and my throat's so awful sore, and you ain't so sharp quite, as you are sometimes. Do you know what I'd do, if I was a boy?"

"How should I know?"

"Go to sea—get away from here, and grow up 'spectable. I wouldn't stop in Kent Street—I hate Kent Street—I'd walk into the country—oh! ever so far—until I came to the sea, and then I'd find a ship and turn sailor."

"Lookee here, you young drab," cried the stay-lace woman, suddenly opening her eyes, and shrieking out in a shrill falsetto, "I'll turn out and skin you, if you can't keep that tongue still. What am I here for?—what did I pay tuppence for?—isn't that cussed coughing baby enough row at a time?"

"If you've got anythink to say aginst my baby," said a husky voice in the next bed, "say it out to his mother, and mind your cat's head while you say it, you disagreeable baggage!"

"Well, the likes of that!"

"And the likes of you, for that matter—don't give me any more of your sarse, or I'll——"

A tapping on the door with a stick diverted the general attention.

"Who's there?"

"Only me, Mrs. Watts."

"Oh! only you," was the response; "come in, will yer? I've no need to lock myself in, while I hide the swag away. Now, what's the matter?"

The door was opened, and enter a policeman, a man in private clothes, with a billycock hat and a walking-stick, accompanied by a pale-faced, long-haired youth, of fourteen years of age.

"Nothing particular the matter—only something lost as usual, Mrs. Watts," said the man in private dress, politely. "Where's Mattie to-night?"

"There she is. She's been in all the evening with a bad throat."

"Poor girl—throats is bad at this time of the year."

The speaker looked at the lad at his side, after giving the first turn backward to the rug.

"Is this the girl?"

The policeman took the candle from the table, and held the light close to the girl's face—white, pinched, and haggard, with black eyes full of horror.

"Don't say it's me, please," she gasped, in a low voice; "I'm the gal that sings in Suffolk Street on a Saturday night, and they gives wittles to at Wesden's. It isn't me."

Mattie had intended to brave it out at first, to have remained stolid, sullen, and defiant, after the manners of her class; but she felt ill and nervous, and the shadow of the prison-house loomed before her and made her heart sink. Prison was a comfortable place in its way, but she had never taken to it—one turn at it had been enough for her. If it had been a policeman, or old Wesden, or anybody but this boy three years her senior in age, many years her junior in knowledge of the world, she would have been phlegmatic to the last; but this boy had been kind to her twice in life—once on Christmas-eve, and once on a Saturday night before that, and she gave way somewhat, partly from her new and unaccountable weakness, partly because it was not a very stern face that looked down into hers.

"That's her, sure enough—eh, young gentleman?" remarked the police officer in private clothes.

There was another pause—the girl's face blanched still more, and the look in her eyes became even more intense and eager; the boy glanced over his shoulder at the servants of the law.

"No—this isn't the girl. Oh! no."

"Are you quite certain? Stand up, Mattie."

Mattie turned out of her rug and stood up, erect and motionless, with her hands to her side, and her sharp black eyes still on Master Hinchford.

"Oh! no, policeman. Ever so much taller!"

"Then we're on the wrong scent it seems, and you'd better go home and leave it to us. Good night, Mrs. Watts."

"Good night," was the muttered response.

Policeman, detective, and Master Hinchford went down the stairs to the court, out of the court into Kent Street, black and noisome—a turgid current, that wore only a semblance of stillness at hours more late than that.

"We'll let you know in the morning if there's any clue," said the detective. "Jem," to the policeman, "see this lad out of Kent Street."

"All right. I think I'd try old Simes for the brooch."

"I'll drop on him presently. Good night, Jem."

"Good night."

The boy and policeman went to the end of Kent Street together, then the boy bade the policeman good night, ran across the road, recrossed in the fog a little lower down, and edged his way round St. George's Church into the old objectionable thoroughfare. A few minutes afterwards, he walked cautiously into the up-stairs room of Mrs. Watts, startling that good lady at her late tripe supper very considerably.

"Hollo! young gemman, what's up now?"

Mattie, who had been crouching before the fire, shrank towards it more, with her hands spread out to the blaze. She looked over her shoulder at the door, anticipating his two unwelcome companions to follow in his wake.

"Look here, Mattie," said he, in a very cool and business-like manner, "fair's fair, you know. I've let you off in a handsome manner, but I'm not going to lose the brooch. If it had been a trumpery brooch, I shouldn't have cared so much."

"Was it real gold?"

"A real gold heart. I gave twelve and sixpence for it—I've been saving up for it ever since last April."

"I'll get it—I'll try and get it," said Mattie; "I haven't it myself now—it's been passed on. Upon my soul, I'll try my hardest to get it back, see if I don't."

"We'll all try our werry hardest, sir," remarked Mrs. Watts, blandly.

"Ah! I daresay you will," said the boy, dubiously; "p'raps it had been better if I'd told the truth—my pa always says 'Stick to the truth, Sidney;' but you did look such a poor body to lock up, that I told a lie for once. And who would have thought that you were a regular thief, Mattie!"

"I'm not a reg'lar—I don't like thieving—I've only thove when I've been werry—werry—hard druv; and I wasn't thinking of thieving, ony of getting warm, when you came bump aginst me in the doorway. I meant to have knocked and asked for a scrap to eat after awhile, when they'd all got good-tempered over the beer and things. I'll bring the brooch—I'll get it back—leave it to me, Master Hinchford."

"How did you know my name?"

"Oh! I know everybody about here—everybody at your place, 'specially. Old Wesden and his gal in the blue meriner—and you, and your father with the red face and the white mustache and hair—and the servant, and the boy who takes the papers out, and is allus dropping them out of the oil-skin kiver, and everybody. I'll bring the brooch, because you let me off. Trust me," she repeated again.

"Well, I'll trust you. Fair play, mind."

"And now, cut out of this—it isn't quite a safe place for you, and the people can't sleep if you talk, and you may catch the whooping cough——"

"And you'll bring the brooch back? It's a bargain between us, Mattie."

"It's all right."

The youth re-echoed "all right," and went down-stairs, watched from the dark landing by the girl who had robbed him. After a while the girl closed the door and followed slowly down-stairs also. She was going in search of old Simes.