Mavis found a resting-place for her tired body in the unattractive district of Pimlico, which is the last halting-place of so many of London's young women before the road to perdition is irretrievably taken. Mavis had purposed going to Hammersmith, but the fates which decide these matters had other views. On the tedious underground journey from New Cross, she felt so unwell that she got out at Victoria to seek refuge in the ladies' cloak room. The woman in charge, who was old, wizened, and despondent, gave Mavis some water and held her baby the while she lamented her misfortunes: these were embodied in the fact that "yesterday there had only been three 'washies' and one torn dress"; also, that "in the whole of the last month there had been but three 'faints' and six ladies the worse for drink." Acting on the cloak-room attendant's advice, Mavis sought harbourage in one of the seemingly countless houses which, in Pimlico, are devoted to the letting of rooms. But Mavis was burdened with a baby; moreover, she could pay so little that no one wished to accommodate her. Directly she stated her simple wants, together with the sum that she could afford to pay, she was, in most cases, bundled into the street with scant consideration for her feelings. After two hours' fruitless search, she found refuge in a tiny milk-shop in a turning off the Vauxhall Bridge Road, where she bought herself a scone and a glass of milk; she also took advantage of the shop's seclusion to give her baby much-needed nourishment. Ultimately, she got a room in a straight street, flanked by stucco-faced high houses, which ran out of Lupus Street. Halverton Street has an atmosphere of its own; it suggests shabby vice, unclean living, as if its inhabitants' lives were mysterious, furtive deviations from the normal. Mavis, for all her weariness, was not insensible to the suggestions that Halverton Street offered; but it was a hot July day; she had not properly recovered from her confinement; she felt that if she did not soon sit down she would drop in the street. She got a room for four shillings a week at the fifth house at which she applied in this street. The door had been opened by a tall, thin, flat-chested girl, whose pasty face was plentifully peppered with pimples. The only room to let was on the ground floor at the back of the house; it was meagre, poorly furnished, but clean. Mavis paid a week's rent in advance and was left to her own devices. For all the presence of her baby and Jill, Mavis felt woefully alone. She bought, and made a meal of bloater paste, bread, butter, and a bottle of stout, to feel the better for it. She then telephoned to the station master at New Cross, to whom she gave the address to which he could forward her trunk. On her return from the shop where she had telephoned, she went into a grocer's, where, for twopence, she purchased a small packing case. With this she contrived to make a cradle for her baby, by