“I am not married and my sisters in England hate me. I once was determined to get married and even got so far as to wait in a white dress at a church in North London. But the man changed his mind and never came. Indeed he did not change his mind, he hated me all along. Everybody does.” Edward was overwhelmed. The woman seemed to him offensive. Did she suppose she was the only person in the world who had Known Grief? However, he felt a little proud because she was telling him these things. He thought he must have a sympathetic face—“the face of one who had been down into the depths.” He drew the corners of his mouth down to make his face more sympathetic. “When I say everybody,” added the woman, “of course I am excepting Edward.” Edward dropped his sympathetic expression just as it was properly adjusted. “Excepting who?” She waved her hand again towards the canary, which flew across on to her shoulder. “Edward,” she explained. “He loves me. He loves my hair and my lips. He pecks and pulls at my hair in the mornings when I let him out of his cage. I lie in bed late—I have nothing to get up for— And Edward holds my chin between his nervous little claws and pushes his beak between my lips....” Edward Williams looked with dislike at her hair and her lips. Her hair was grey and had a middle-aged, tangled curl in it. Her lips were dry and rather grey too. “My name is Edward too,” he said. “Well,” said the remittance woman, pleased. “Isn’t that a nice stroke of chance? Tell me about yourself. Why are you attempting an unlikely job like this?” Edward at once felt pity in the air. He groped for pity instinctively. He told her in a plaintive voice about his loneliness, the fact that he had no mother and that Jimmy was killed at Loos, he told her of his efforts to support himself, of his love for Emily.... When he had finished he felt only slightly guilty and looked down at the book he wished her to buy. She did not want it but surely she could afford to buy something she did not want from a kindred soul. He would refuse at first her offer to buy his book, he thought. “We are rather alike,” she said. “We neither of us get on with the world.” Her voice was almost jealous. She so rarely met competition in her line. “Yes,” said Edward. “But you are more fortunate than I, if you are hated. I am ignored, which is much worse.” She assented doubtfully. “Certainly everybody hates me,” she insisted. It was her one vanity and her support. There was a pause and they looked at each other with dislike. “I don’t need your book,” she said. “But I have five dollars to spare. I suppose you are insulted now. You can put the five dollars in your pocket and spare me the trouble of breaking the back of my bookshelf with such a straw as _Milton for Boys_. Take it and hate me for it if you like. I am used to that.”