There was at least no actual squalor in the street on which I looked: only dirt and gloom and ugliness. The houses which faced me were comparatively new, and they were small and neat, and of a square and thick-set build. But there happened to be one hundred and sixty of them, each exactly like its neighbour, and having each before its doorway a small pale or enclosure containing--cinders and rags and pieces of paper and battered cans and smudgy babies and hungry cats. And there was grime on all the windows, and in front of them a very vulgar man was selling bloaters, loudly. Also, in all that soot-brown avenue there was one white thing: a hawthorn tree in bloom, which shuddered gently in the fog-shine like a discontented spectre. And those ridiculous fat houses stood there stoutly, shoulder to shoulder, one hundred and sixty of them, eyeing her with dolour. And a voice beneath my window made speech, saying loudly: "You give me my daughter's combings back, ye thievin' slut." So I left the window and lighted a pipe and crawled back into bed.
And then, as the story writers say, a strange thing happened. There came a sudden tap upon my bedroom door, and without further warning there entered in a--a lady. She was rather a young lady, to be sure, some fifteen years of age, perhaps. And she was wearing a petticoat--a striped petticoat--and her hair was dressed into innumerable pigtails, and her top was covered by--by a--a--don't they call it a camisole? And she bade me "Good-morning," very calmly.
"G--G--Good-morning!" I responded. I hoped to heaven that I was not blushing.
"Don't trouble to scream," said the lady, in an off-hand manner. "It is all right: I have come for my stockings."
"Really," I began, a little hotly, "_I_ haven't ta----" And then I stopped. A horrible thought presented itself to me.
Doctor Brink no doubt combined the practice of alienism with that of spot-cash cures. And this lady was doubtless an "inmate." And----
The voice of the inmate interrupted me. "It's quite all right, really it is. I'm not accusing you of theft or anything else. I only want to get my stockings from this cupboard. Mrs. Gomm, our 'char,' she mixes things up so. And I want a brown pair, because this is my day for being respectable with my aunt at Ealing, and you wear your brown dress and a neat toque for that sort of thing; and where the devil that woman has--oh, here we are. Want darning, of course. Damn!"