She set her teeth, and pulled bell after bell. Along Southampton Row, through Cosmo Place into Queen Square, she wandered, while the day grew brighter and brighter; down Devonshire Street into Theobald's Road, past the Holborn Town Hall. Amid these reiterated demands for references a sudden terror seized her; she remembered the need for the certificate that she had had when she quitted the hospital. She had never thought about it since. It might be lying crushed in a corner of the trunk that she had left behind in Leicester; it might long ago have got destroyed--she did not know. It had never occurred to her that the resumption of her former calling would one day present itself as her natural resource. In ordinary circumstances the loss would have been a trifle; but she felt it an impossibility to refer directly to the Matron, because to do so would lead to the exposure of what had happened in the interval. The absence of a certificate therefore meant the absence of all testimony to her being a qualified nurse. As the helplessness of her plight rushed in upon her she trembled. How long must she not expect to wait for employment when she had nothing to speak for her? To go back to nursing would be more difficult than to earn a living in a capacity that she had never essayed. And she could wait so short a time for anything, so horribly short a time! She would starve if she did not find something soon! Busses jogged by her laden with sober-faced men and women, bound for the vocations that sustained the white elephant of life. Shops already gave evidence of trade, and children with uncovered heads sped along the curb with a "ha'porth o' milk," or mysterious breakfasts folded in scraps of newspaper. Each atom of the awakening bustle passed her engrossed by its own existence, operated by its separate interests, revolving in its individual world. London looked to her a city without mercy or impulse, populated to brimfulness, and flowing over. Every chink and crevice seemed stocked with its appointed denizens, and the hope of finding bread here which nobody's hand was clutching appeared presumption. Eleven o'clock had struck--that is to say, she had been walking for more than three hours--when she saw a card with "Furnished Room to Let" suspended from a blind, and her efforts to gain shelter succeeded at last. It was an unpretentious little house, in an unpretentious turning; and a sign on the door intimated that it was the residence of "J. Shuttleworth, mason." A hard-featured woman was evoked by the dispirited knock. Seeing a would-be lodger who was dressed like a lady, she added eighteenpence to the rent that she usually asked. She asked five shillings a week, and the applicant agreed to it and was grateful.