'Sorry to lose you, mum,' said Miss Briggs, ''ope yer'll 'ave a success. In course, as you 'aven't given me notice, mum, it'll 'ave to be a week's money more.' 'Oh, come Miss Briggs, this is too bad,' cried Victoria, 'why, you've got a whole floor vacant! What would it have mattered if I had given you notice?' 'Might have let it, mum. Besides it's the law,' said Miss Briggs, placing her arms akimbo, ready for the fray. 'Very well then,' said Victoria coldly, 'don't let's say anything more about it.' Miss Briggs looked at her critically. 'No offence meant, mum,' she said timidly, 'it's a 'ard life, lodgers.' 'Indeed?' said Victoria without any show of interest. 'You wouldn't believe it, mum, all I've got to put up with. There's Hetty now . . .' 'Yes, yes, Miss Briggs,' said Victoria impatiently, 'you've told me about Hetty.' 'To be sure, mum,' replied Miss Briggs, humbly. 'It ain't easy to make ends meet. What with the rent and them Borough Council rates. There ain't no end to it, mum. I lives in the basement, mum, and that means gas all the afternoon, mum.' Victoria looked at her again. This was a curious outlook. The poor troglodyte had translated the glory of the sun into cubic feet of gas. 'Yes, I suppose it is hard,' she said reflectively. 'To be sure, mum,' mused Miss Briggs. 'Sometimes you can't let at all. I've watched through the area railings, mum, many a long day in August, wondering if the legs I can see was coming 'ere. They don't mostly, mum.' 'Then why do you go on?' asked Victoria hardening suddenly. 'What am I to do, mum? I just gets my board and lodging out of it, mum. Keeps one respectable; always been respectable, mum. That ain't so easy in London, mum. Ah, when I was a young girl, might have been different, mum; you should have seen me 'air. Curls like anything, mum, when I puts it in papers. 'Ad a bit of a figure too, mum.' 'Deary me!' Victoria looked with sympathy at the hard thin face, the ragged hair. Yes, she was respectable enough, poor Miss Briggs! Women have a hard life. No wonder they too are hard. You cannot afford to be earthenware among the brass pots. 'What will you do when you can't run the house any more?' she asked more gently. 'Do, mum? I dunno.' Yet another philosophy. 'Miss Briggs,' came a man's voice from the stairs. 'Coming, sir,' yelled Miss Briggs in the penetrating tone that calling from cellar to attic teaches. 'Where are my boots?' said the voice on the stairs. 'I'll get 'em for you, sir,' cried Miss Briggs shuffling to the door on her worn slippers. Life is a hard thing, thought Victoria again. Another woman for the scrap heap. Fourteen hours work a day, nightmares of unlet rooms, boots to black and coals to carry, dirt, loneliness, harsh words and at the end 'I dunno.' Is that to be my fate? she wondered.