"Give me the letter," she wailed suddenly. Then Frank gave it her. (V) "But I can't possibly go home like this," whispered Gertie agitatedly in the passage, after the Major's return half an hour later. "Good Lord!" whispered Frank, "what an extraordinary girl you are, to think--" "I don't care. I can't, and I won't." Frank cast an eye at the door, beyond which dozed the Major in the chair before the fire. "Well, what d'you want?" "I want another dress, and ... and lots of things." Frank stared at her resignedly. "How much will it all come to?" "I don't know. Two pounds--two pounds ten." "Let's see: to-day's the twentieth. We must get you back before Christmas. If I let you have it to-morrow, will it do?--to-morrow night?" She nodded. A sound came from beyond the door, and she fled. * * * * * I am not sure about the details of the manner in which Frank got the two pounds ten, but I know he got it, and without taking charity from a soul. I know that he managed somehow to draw his week's money two days before pay-day, and for the rest, I suspect the pawnshop. What is quite certain is that when his friends were able to take stock of his belongings a little later, the list of them was as follows: One jacket, one shirt, one muffler, a pair of trousers, a pair of socks, a pair of boots, one cap, one tooth-brush, and a rosary. There was absolutely nothing else. Even his razor was gone. Things, therefore, were pretty bad with him on the morning of the twenty-second of December. I imagine that he still possessed a few pence, but out of this few pence he had to pay for his own and Gertie's journey to Chiswick, as well as keep himself alive for another week. At least, so he must have thought. It must have been somewhere in Kensington High Street that he first had a hint of a possibility of food to be obtained free, for, although I find it impossible to follow all his movements during these days, it is quite certain that he partook of the hospitality of the Carmelite Fathers on this morning. He mentions it, with pleasure, in his diary. It is a very curious and medieval sight--this feeding of the poor in the little deep passage that runs along the outside of the cloister of the monastery in Church Street. The passage is approached by a door at the back of the house, opening upon the lane behind, and at a certain hour on each morning of the year is thronged from end to end with the most astonishing and deplorable collection of human beings to be seen in London. They are of all ages and sizes, from seventeen to seventy, and the one thing common to them all is extreme shabbiness and poverty.