Miss Nigel looked round at the room with evident satisfaction. "You will be comfortable here, I think," she said; "we do our best to make the girls happy. We expect them, however, to conform to our rules; you will find them explained in this book." She placed a little blue pamphlet on the dressing-table. "Lights are put out at ten, and if you are later than that, you have to pay a small fine for being let in, a threepenny door fee, we call it. Everyone is requested to make as little noise as possible in their rooms or along the passages, and to be punctual for dinner." With one more look round she turned to go. Half-way out, however, a kindly thought struck her, and she looked back at Joan. "Dinner is at seven-thirty," she said. "I expect you will be glad to have it and get to bed. You look very tired." Joan would have liked to ask if she could have dinner upstairs, but one glance at the book of rules and regulations decided her against the idea. Shamrock House evidently admitted of no such luxury, and on second thoughts, how ridiculous it was to suppose that dinner could be carried up five flights of stairs for the benefit of someone paying fifteen and six a week all told. She was too tired and too depressed to face the prospect of a meal downstairs, she would just have to go to bed without dinner, she concluded. The House woke to life as she lay there, evidently the inhabitants returned about this time. Joan remembered the cabman's somewhat blunt description and smiled at the memory. A Home for Working Girls. That was why it had seemed so silent and deserted before, shops and offices do not shut till after six. But now the workers were coming home, she could hear their feet along the passages, the slamming of doors, voices and laughter from the room next hers. Home! This narrow, cold room, those endless stairs and passages outside, they were to be home for the future. The hot tears pricked in her eyes, but she fought against tears. After all, she had been very lucky to find it, it was cheap, it was clean; other girls lived here and were happy, someone had laughed next door. "I have got to take you firmly in hand," Joan argued with her depression. "It is no use making a fuss about things that are all my own fault. I tried to play with life and I did not succeed. It is too big and hard. If I had wanted to work it out differently I ought to have been very strong. But I am not strong, I am only just ordinary. This is my chance again, and in the plain, straight way I must win through." She spoke the words almost aloud, as if challenging fate: "I will win through." CHAPTER XI "Will my strength last me? Did not someone say The way was ever easier all the way?" H. C. BEECHING.