To add to her misery, everything seemed to go awry. The matches were only found after a prolonged hunt for them; for many minutes the lamp refused to light; and when, at last, a flame shot up, Christina thought that the water in the kettle boiled more slowly than water had ever boiled before. Dry bread had never tasted more unappetising; and milkless tea (though it was certainly warm, and in that respect carried a certain amount of comfort with it), tasted bitter and nauseating. The girl longed, with an almost childish longing, for something more to eat and drink. Visions rose before her of the Donaldsons' cosy nursery, of a plate piled high with hot buttered toast, of a big home-made seed cake, that could be eaten as quickly as the nursery folks liked, without any dread of future want, and she pushed away her plate, and laid her head down upon the table, sobbing as though her heart would break. Hot buttered toast and seed cake are unromantic sounding things enough, no doubt, but when one is very hungry, and very heartsick, and only twenty into the bargain, the thoughts of past plenty make present poverty seem well nigh intolerable. Good stuff must have gone to the making of little Christina, and whoever those ancestors on her mother's side had been, they had passed on to her a goodly heritage of courage and endurance. Her storm of sobs was of very brief duration. Giving herself a little shake both actually and metaphorically, she raised her head from the table, resolutely dried her eyes, choked back her sobs and forced herself to finish eating the dry morsels of bread, and drinking the nauseous draught of tea. Either the food itself, or the effort she had made to eat it, sent a tingling of new strength along her limbs, and she broke into a faint laugh over her own despair. "You perfect goose," she said firmly, rising to wash up her tea things; "crying won't make anything better. Mr. Donaldson used to say, 'Don't look for your bridges before you come to them,' and so I won't look at the bridge. Mrs. Jones will put up for me about the rent, until I am really going to step right on to it. And before I give up every bit of hope, I ought--perhaps I ought to try and pawn the pendant, only I can't bear doing it. I can't bear it."