knocking out the projecting nails with a hammer borrowed from the pimply-faced woman at her lodging. If the extemporised cradle lacked adornment, it was adorable by reason of the love and devotion with which she surrounded her little one. Her box arrived in the course of the evening, when Mavis set about making the room look as homelike as possible. This done, she made further inroads on her midday purchases of bread and bloater paste, washed, fed her baby, and said her prayers before undressing for the night. At ten o'clock, mother and child were asleep. Mavis had occupied her room for some days before she learned anything of the house in which she lodged. It was kept by a Mr, Mrs, and Miss Gussle, who lived in the basement. It was Miss Gussle who had opened the door to Mavis on the day she came. Mrs Gussle was never seen. Mavis heard from one source that she was always drunk; from another, that she was a teetotaller and spent her time at devotions; from a third, that she neither drank nor prayed, but passed the day in reading novelettes. But it was Mr Gussle who appealed the most to Mavis's sense of character. He was a wisp of a bald-headed, elderly man, who was invariably dressed in a rusty black frockcoat suit, a not too clean dicky, and a made-up black bow tie, the ends of which were tucked beneath the flaps of a turned down paper collar. He had no business or trade, but did the menial work of the house. He made the beds, brought up the meals and water, laid the tables and emptied the slops; but, while thus engaged, he never made any remark, and when spoken to replied in monosyllables. The ground floor front was let to a third-rate Hebraic music-hall artiste, who perfunctorily attended his place of business. The second and third floors, and most of the top rooms, were let to good-looking young women, who were presumed to belong to the theatrical profession. If they were correctly described, there was no gainsaying their devotion to their calling. They would leave home well before the theatre doors were open to the public, with their faces made up all ready to go on the stage; also, they were apparently so reluctant to leave the scene of their labours that they would commonly not return till the small hours. The top front room was rented by an author, who made a precarious living by writing improving stories for weekly and monthly journals and magazines. Whenever the postman's knock was heard at the door, it was invariably followed by the appearance of the author in the passage, often in the scantiest of raiment, to discover whether the post had brought him any luck. Although his stories were the delight of the more staid among his readers, the writer was on the best of terms with the "theatrical" young women, he spending most of his time in their company. The lodgers at Mrs Gussle's were typical of the inhabitants of Halverton Street. And if a house influences the natures of those who dwell within its