She was hardly out of prison when Ernest's father chanced upon a woman who could provide for him more liberally, and Clementine was again a free agent. The streets knew her no more, though for an interval the workhouse did. This was the crisis when, with the shrewdness acquired in the London slums, she learned something of the English law to her own advantage, and through the courts compelled the father to contribute to the support of his son. The weekly three shillings and sixpence paid for a room. For food she had to work. With prison behind her, she was afraid to ask for a place in respectable houses, and I should not care to record the sinks of iniquity and squalid dens where her shrill treble and little girl's giggle were heard. Ernest was dumped down of a morning upon any friendly neighbour who would keep an eye on him, until, somehow or other, _la vieille grandmere_ appeared upon the scene and Clementine once more had two to feed and the daily problem of her own hunger to face. Her responsibilities never drove her to work harder than was absolutely necessary. "We must all toil or steal," Carlyle says. But Clementine knew better. She could have suggested a third alternative, for she had reduced begging to a fine art. Her scent was as keen for charitable associations as a pig's for truffles, and she could tell to a minute the appointed time of their alms-giving, and to a penny the value of their alms. She would, no matter when, drop regular work at the risk of losing it, to rush off after a possible charity. There was a _Societe_--I never knew it by any other name--that, while she was with me, drew her from my kitchen floor or my luncheon dishes as surely as Thursday came round, and the clock struck one. Why it existed she never made quite clear to me,--I doubt if she had an idea why, herself. It was enough for her that the poor French in London were under its special charge, and that, when luck was with her, she might come away with a loaf of bread, or an order for coals, or, if she played the beggar well, as much as a shilling.