"Ain't you got _no_ one?" asked the weary Writer. He had been doing this sort of thing for the last eighteen months, and it rather bored him. "S'pose you was to die--wouldn't you like no one to be told?" Nosey brought his black brows together with a scowl and shook his head. This was what he wanted, an opportunity to declare his antagonism to all the gentler influences of the land. . . . If he were to die, even . . . The Ship's Corporal, waiting to guide him to the New Entry Mess, touched him on the elbow. The Writer was gathering his papers together. A sudden wave of forlornness swept over Nosey. He wanted his dinner, and was filled with emptiness and self-pity. The world was vast and disinterested in him. There were evidences on all sides of an unfamiliar and terrifying discipline. . . . "You come allonger me," said the voice of the Ship's Corporal, a deep, alarming voice, calculated to inspire awe and reverence in the breast of a new entry. Nosey turned, and then stopped irresolutely. If he were to die---- "'Ere," he said, relenting. "Nex' o' kin--I ain't got none. But I gotter fren'." He coloured hotly. "Miss Abel's 'er name; 14 Golder's Square, Bloomsbury, London. Miss J. Abel." This was Janie--the Grievance. It was to punish Janie that Nosey had flung in his lot with those who go down to the sea in ships. Prior to this drastic step Nosey had been an errand-boy, a rather superior kind of errandboy, who went his rounds on a ramshackle bicycle with a carrier fixed in front. Painted in large letters on the carrier was the legend: J. HOLMES & SON, FISHMONGER ICE, ETC., and below, in much smaller letters, "Cash on delivery." Janie was a general servant in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. She it was who answered the area door when Nosey called to deliver such kippers and smoked haddock as were destined by the gods and Mr. Holmes for the boarding-house breakfast table. It is hard to say in what respect Janie lit the flame of love within Nosey's breast. She was diminutive and flat-chested; her skin was sallow from life-long confinement in basement sculleries and the atmosphere of the Bloomsbury boarding-house. She had little beady black eyes, and a print dress that didn't fit her at all well. One stocking was generally coming down in folds over her ankle. Her hands were chapped and nubbly--pathetic as the toil-worn hands of a woman alone can be. Altogether she was just the little unlovely slavey of fiction and the drama and everyday life in boarding-house-land. Yet the fishmonger's errand-boy--Orson Baines, by your leave, and captain of his soul--loved her as not even Antony loved Cleopatra. Janie met him every other Sunday as near three o'clock as she could get away. The Sunday boarding-house luncheon included soup on its menu, which meant more plates to wash up than usual. They met under the third lamp-post on the left-hand side going towards the British Museum.