She led the way through the hall into the dining-room, where the remains of a frugal lunch on a much-darned cloth were scattered around a dying fern in a tarnished brass pot, sole ornament of the long bare table. The room had a forlorn look, with its dingy, crooked blinds, the mantel-piece littered with circulars above the feeble gas fire. It had the unhomelike air one associates with lodgings--a place to be used, not loved, and shunned when meals were over. "Now don't say you can't come." McTaggart frowned severely--"because I mean to carry you off whether you like it or not. I've got the car for the day, and we'll go right into the country and have tea somewhere--at a little village pub!" "Lovely!" Jill clapped her hands. She poured out a brimming cup of a thin and cloudy mixture from a chipped coffee-pot. "There you are!--Sugar? The only thing is I'd promised to go and see the baker's wife." McTaggart laughed at her serious face. "Oh, bother the baker's wife! Surely for one day you might relax your ... social efforts. Think of poor me." "Poor you!" Jill mocked--"I shall have to go there first if we can fit it in. She's been so ill--it's rather a sad story, but I'll tell you if you like." "Nothing infectious, I hope?" McTaggart stirred his muddy coffee; then, manfully, took a great gulp. "Oh, dear, no." Jill's voice was calm. "She's had a baby, that's all." There came a little pause. "It's dead too," the girl went on in clear, steady tones. "That's the cruel part. It needn't have been." "No?" McTaggart felt somewhat at a loss. But Jill was plainly absorbed in the simple tragedy. She leaned towards him, elbows planted on the table, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes far away. "She was _such_ a nice little thing!--I've known her for years. She used to come with her grandmother, who did upholstery work, on Saturday afternoons and give her a hand. She, herself, was employed at a laundry and engaged to the baker even then. "For five long years they saved all they could and at last they were married and took a tiny house next door to where our charwoman lives. It's not the baker himself, you know, but one of his employes who makes the bread--he's the head man. They _were_ so happy, and then--all this trouble came! "The 'bakers' went out on strike--d'you remember it?--and, bit by bit, all their savings melted away. The husband was worried out of his life. He couldn't go back on his pals, you see, or find any other job to do; and so at last his wife returned to the laundry and begged for some employment again.