When he was gone, Salvina remembered that the five shillings were for the mattress. But she further bethought herself that the sum would scarcely have sufficed even for a straw mattress, and that the little gold ring Kitty had given her when she matriculated would fetch more. Her mother's jewellery must be left sacred; the poor creature was smarting enough from the sense of loss. Bidding her sit on the stairs till she returned, she hastened into Mare Street, the great Hackney highway, christened "The Devil's Mile" by the Salvation Army. Early experience had familiarized her with the process of pawning, but now she slipped furtively into the first pawn-shop and did not stay to make a good bargain. She spent on a telegram to the central post-office sixpence of the proceeds, so that she might be able to draw out without delay the few pounds she had laid by for her summer holiday. While she was purchasing the mattress at the garishly illuminated furniture store, the words "Hire System" caught her eye, and seemed a providential solution of the position. She broached negotiations for the furnishing of a bed-room and a kitchen, minus carpet and oilcloth (for these would not fit the cheaper apartments into which they would now have to revert), but she found there were tedious formalities to be gone through, and that her own signature would be invalid, as she was legally a child. However, she was able to secure the porterage of the mattress at once, and, followed by a bending Atlas, she hurried back to her mother--who sat on her stair, moaning--and diverted her from her griefs by teaching her to sign her name, in view of the legal exigencies of the morrow. It was a curious wind-up to her day's teaching. Poor Mrs. Brill's obstinate objection to education had to give way at last under such unexpected conditions, but she insisted on the shortest possible spelling, and so the uncouth "Esther Brills" pencilled at the top of the sheet were exchanged for more flowing "E. Brills" lower down. Even then, the good woman took the thing as a pictorial flourish, or a section of a map, and disdained acquaintance with the constituent letters, so that her progress in learning remained only nominal.