There was at least no actual squalor in the street on which I looked: only dirt and gloom and ugliness. The houses which faced me were comparatively new, and they were small and neat, and of a square and thick-set build. But there happened to be one hundred and sixty of them, each exactly like its neighbour, and having each before its doorway a small pale or enclosure containing—cinders and rags and pieces of paper and battered cans and smudgy babies and hungry cats. And there was grime on all the windows, and in front of them a very vulgar man was selling bloaters, loudly. Also, in all that soot-brown avenue there was one white thing: a hawthorn tree in bloom, which shuddered gently in the fog-shine like a discontented spectre. And those ridiculous fat houses stood there stoutly, shoulder to shoulder, one hundred and sixty of them, eyeing her with dolour. And a voice beneath my window made speech, saying loudly: "You give me my daughter’s combings back, ye thievin’ slut." So I left the window and lighted a pipe and crawled back into bed. * * * * * And then, as the story writers say, a strange thing happened. There came a sudden tap upon my bedroom door, and without further warning there entered in a—a lady. She was rather a young lady, to be sure, some fifteen years of age, perhaps. And she was wearing a petticoat—a striped petticoat—and her hair was dressed into innumerable pigtails, and her top was covered by—by a—a—don’t they call it a camisole? And she bade me "Good-morning," very calmly. "G—G—Good-morning!" I responded. I hoped to heaven that I was not blushing. "Don’t trouble to scream," said the lady, in an off-hand manner. "It is all right: I have come for my stockings." "Really," I began, a little hotly, "_I_ haven’t ta——" And then I stopped. A horrible thought presented itself to me. Doctor Brink no doubt combined the practice of alienism with that of spot-cash cures. And this lady was doubtless an "inmate." And—— The voice of the inmate interrupted me. "It’s quite all right, really it is. I’m not accusing you of theft or anything else. I only want to get my stockings from this cupboard. Mrs. Gomm, our ’char,’ she mixes things up so. And I want a brown pair, because this is my day for being respectable with my aunt at Ealing, and you wear your brown dress and a neat toque for that sort of thing; and where the devil that woman has—oh, here we are. Want darning, of course. Damn!" Swearing seemed to be a widespread habit in this unusual household. I coughed—the sort of cough you use when children are present and your deaf Uncle David is reviving his recollections of India in the sixties.