But girls such as I have been writing of do not comprise the whole inhabitants of these chambers. There are married couples, for the greater part, living as much on the edge of things as the girls. I remember one quite cheerful matron confessing to me that she and her husband at that moment had only twopence between them. He was an engineer, of sorts, and when he was out of a billet she used to take in dressmaking by the day, and get a small part at one of the theatres in the chorus, or as part of a crowd; or—being possessed of an extremely fine figure—pose for a photograph or sketch of some newly imported model gown for one of the larger drapery firms, or as an example of the newest styles of hairdressing for a ladies’ paper. Then there are more prosperous couples, sometimes with children—or more likely with one child—and various men who “batch” in places such as these, getting their meals out at some handy tea-room or restaurant. Cheaper than these rooms are others, to be found for the most part in the narrow back-streets—buildings with long, echoing, uncarpeted passages, kept very moderately clean by occasional charwomen, with no hot-water supply whatever, and for the most part no bathroom. They are badly lighted, shivery places even on the hottest days, and though some of the rooms are bright and cheery enough, the doors, with the dirty, cracked, chipped paint, bear an ominous look, as though the wolf were for ever pawing at them. They are failures as buildings. Mostly they have not been designed for residential purposes at all, but as huge blocks of offices, in those days of swollen pride “before the boom.”—In England things have happened before the Conquest and after, but even B.C. and A.D. are letters which here have no significance—except to the geologist—and it is as “before the boom” or “after the boom” that all affairs of any importance are said to have occurred, unless the date is further particularized as “the year So-and-so won the Cup.” Among many other mementoes of the great bubble these buildings stand confessed failures: as unadapted for the purposes they are put to as are the many human failures, who drift into them, aimlessly as a stray leaf is drifted through an open door by some passing breeze.