Gertrude took off her wet waterproof, and hat, and sitting down by the fire, looked round her mother's bed-sitting-room. There was a tray on the table with the remains of a meal. There were also a large number of women's hats, some trimmed, some untrimmed, some in process of trimming, lying about the room, on the different articles of furniture. There was a tiny dog in a basket, which barked shrilly and feebly as Gertrude approached the fire, and there were various cheap illustrated papers and a couple of sixpenny novels to be seen emerging from the litter here and there. For the rest, the furniture was of a squalid lodging-house type. On the chimney-piece however was a bunch of daffodils, the only fresh and pleasing object in the room. To Gertrude it was as though she had seen it all before. Behind the room, there stretched a succession of its ghostly fellows--the rooms of her childhood. In those rooms she could remember her mother as a young and comely woman, but always with the same slovenly dress, and the same untidy--though then abundant and beautiful--hair. And as she half shut her eyes she seemed also to see her younger sister coming in and out--malicious, secretive--with her small turn-up nose, pouting lips, and under-hung chin. She made no reply to her mother's complaining remark. But while she held her cold hands to the blaze that Mrs. Marvell stirred up, her eyes took careful note of her mother's aspect. "Much as usual," was her inward comment. "Whatever happens, she'll outlive me." "You've been going on with the millinery?" She pointed to the hats. "I hope you've been making it pay." "It provides me with a few shillings now and then," said Mrs. Marvell, sitting heavily down on the other side of the fire--"which Winnie generally gets out of me!" she said sharply. "I am a miserable pauper now, as I always have been." Gertrude's look was unmoved. Her mother had, she knew, all that her father had left behind him--no great sum, but enough for a solitary woman to live on. "Well, anyway, you must be glad of it as an occupation. I wish I could help you. But I haven't really a farthing of my own, beyond the interest on my L1000. I handle a great deal of money, but it all goes to the League, and I never let them pay me more than my bare expenses. Now then, tell me all about everybody!" And she lay back in the dilapidated basket-chair that had been offered her, and prepared herself to listen. The family chronicle was done. It was as depressing as usual, and Gertrude made but little comment upon it. When it was finished, Mrs. Marvell rose, and put the kettle on the fire, and got out a couple of fresh cups and saucers from a cupboard. As she did so, she looked round at her visitor. "And you're as deep in that militant business as ever." Gertrude made a negligent sign of assent.