Cradock was young and chivalrous, and knew not much of these things, which his position had kept from him; nor in his self–abandonment cared he much about them. Nevertheless, he shrank unconsciously from the lowering of his existence. And now he sat up, writing, writing, till his wet clothes made little pools on the floor, while he answered twenty advertisements, commercial, literary, promiscuous. Then he looked at his little roll of postage–stamps, and with shivering fingers affixed them. There were only fifteen; and it was too late to get any more that night; and he felt that he could not afford to use them now so rashly. So he ran out into the slushy streets, gamboged with London snow, and posted those fifteen of his letters which were the least ambitious. By this time he knew that the best chance was of something not over–gorgeous. Wena did not go with him, but howled until he came back. Then he gave the poor little thing, with some self–reproach at his tardiness, all the rest of his cottage loaf, and his haʼporth of milk, which she took with some protestations, looking up at him wistfully now and then, to see whether he was eating. “No, Wena, I canʼt eat to–night; bilious from over–feeding, perhaps. But Iʼve done a good eveningʼs work, and weʼll be very plucky for breakfast, girl, and have sixpenceworth of cold ham. No fear there of making a cannibal of you, you innocent little soul.” He was desperately afraid, as most young fellows from the country are, of having unclean animals spicily served up by the London allantopolæ. This terror is the result for the most part of rustic sham knowingness, and the British love of stale jokes. However, beyond all controversy, dark are the rites of sepulture of the measly pigs around London. He crept, at last, beneath his scanty bedding—clean, although so patched and threadbare—and the iron cross–straps shook and rattled with the shudders that went through him. Wena, who slept beneath the bed in a nest which she made of the drugget–scrap, jumped upon the blanket at midnight, to know pray what was the matter. Then she licked his face, and tried to warm him, in his broken slumbers. That day he had taken a virulent cold, which struck into his system, and harboured there for a fortnight, till it broke out in a raging fever. The next day, Cradock received a letter, of doubtful classicality, and bearing the Hammersmith post–mark.