something to do; but she must busy herself at once to find this vague something.
She knew where there was a small registry office for domestics in a street in Bloomsbury. Mrs. Grimm had on one occasion procured a servant from it, and Mary, who had always entertained some vague idea of running away at some time or other—the sole hope that buoyed up her youth—had treasured up the address.
So she went to this place and found there a motherly old lady in blue spectacles, who happened not to be one of those grasping hags who keep so many of the inferior class of registry offices, defrauding poor servant girls of their hard-earned wages.
Mary told her wants—she wished a place as housemaid, or even maid-of-all-work if the family was a small one.
The old lady looked kindly at the girl, explained the system on which her business was conducted, and opening a large ledger asked:
"Your name, my dear?"
"Mary Barnes." The answer came out readily enough considering that it had not occurred to her before to choose a new name.
"Your address?" continued the dame, who transcribed the answers in a deliberate round hand in the book before her.
This staggered Mary, and unable to draw on her imagination quickly enough, she blurted out her father's address.
"Ah indeed," said her interlocutor, "Mrs. Grimm; I once provided her with a girl—let me see—three years ago I think; and how long have you been in her service?"
"Two years, ma'am."
"As housemaid?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"That is very good, my dear; and why are you leaving her?"
To this query her reply was a fairly truthful one, though she stammered over it a good deal.
"The work was too hard; my step——Mrs. Grimm was very unkind, indeed cruel."
"Yes," went on the old lady thoughtfully, "yes, I remember her. She appeared a disagreeable woman—very much so indeed; that's how I haven't forgotten all about her, what with the many hundreds of mistresses I see—and let me see, you are still living with her you say?"
"Yes, my month is not up for three days yet," replied Mary, who was now getting into a good glib way of lying—small blame to the poor thing.
"Will she give you a good character?"
"Oh yes."
"Well, I do think I know of a place for you, a very kind lady living alone with only her crippled son; she wants just such a one as you seem to be. She's a friend of mine. I know her well, and if you do well by her, she'll do well by you, my dear. Here is her address; you can go and see her for yourself," and she wrote on a piece of note-paper the address, which was somewhere in the direction of Maida Vale.
Mary thanked her and went out. How vexed she was that she had been such a fool as to be surprised into giving her father's address. It would be no good going to the place after that. Fancy her employer writing to her stepmother for her character, and she laughed aloud at the idea, to the great scandal of an old maid and two pug dogs who were passing her at the moment of this indecent ebullition.
But on second thoughts Mary decided that she would go to the address. If the lady in question was really so kind, might she not take her without a character? Why not tell her the whole story and throw herself on her generosity? Anyhow, she would call and see what she could make of it—there could be no harm in that.
Poor Tommy Hudson would have hardly liked to know how little he was in this girl's thoughts this day, genuinely grateful though she was.
He would not have confessed it to himself, but he would have preferred had she been miserable on his account.
How selfish at the bottom this love of a man often is; yet after all, a woman will love him even for the very selfishness of his love; so as all parties are suited there is nothing to complain of.
Mary walked all the way by the splendid shops of Oxford Street, up the long Edgware Road, then to the left along the canal which brought her to the vicinity of the address she sought.
While yet some few hundred yards from it, and uncertain of the way, she found herself in a street of small two-storied houses, somewhat like that in which her father lived.
The street was quite deserted save for a little group in front of one of the houses, the door of which was open.
The group consisted of a cabman on a hansom, a rough-looking man and a tall pale woman on the pavement, seemingly engaged in lively altercation.
Mary determined to ask her way of the woman and crossed the street to do so.
On approaching she perceived that the rough-looking man had placed his foot in the doorway, thus preventing the woman from shutting him out as she evidently wished to do.
"No!" he was shouting in a menacing voice. "Bli' me if I move till you give me a bob! D'ye think I've follered this ere cab at a run all the way from Paddington, and lifted down that 'ere 'eavy box for a blooming tanner? Not I, marm."
Mary, being a London girl, grasped the situation at once. The lady had arrived by train, had driven home with her luggage in this cab, which had been followed by one of those pests of suburban London, the cab-runners—ruffians that are on the look out for unwary travellers, pursue the cabs to help take the baggage down—go away civilly enough with their just pay if they have to deal with men; but, as in the present instance, when they have to deal with women in lonely streets with none to defend them, put on the bully and extort double their due.
The cabman was leaning over the box of his hansom, looking pensively on the fray, waiting to see how it would end, but not interfering, remaining strictly neutral.
Mary arrived at this juncture, and taking all in, was inspired to address the woman with these words, spoken in a confident tone.
"It's all right, ma'am, I've seen the policeman. He's coming on now; he's just round the corner."
The rough on hearing this stared at the girl, and thinking that she was someone belonging to the house who had slipped out for the police unobserved by him, considered it prudent, after an oath and a growl or two, to shuffle off slouchingly but not slowly. The cabman too drove off with alacrity, not being anxious to enter into explanations with his natural enemy, the man in the blue coat.
"Why, child!" exclaimed Catherine King in amazement, for she was the tall pale woman, and had just returned from her expedition to the North in search of a pupil. "Why, child!"
"Well, ma'am, I saw what was up and I knew that tale would move the fellows."
"A sharp girl!" scrutinising her closely, "a clever girl! and you can lie very fairly."
Sister Catherine said this in an appreciative way, as if allotting discriminate praise for some creditable accomplishment.
"It is a good thing to know how to lie now and then," remarked Mary with a hard laugh.
"It is," replied the other woman thoughtfully. It did not take long for an idea to possess
