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"Matter o' means," she said sadly. "I pay five shillings a week for her
board, and the train is one-and-eight return, so I have to be careful,
you see, and if I lost my place what would happen to baby?"
I was very low and tired and down when I resumed my walk. But when I
thought for a moment of taking omnibuses for the rest of my journey I
remembered the waitress's story and told myself that the little I had
belonged to my child, and so I struggled on.
But what a weary march it was during the next two hours! I was in the
East End now, and remembering the splendour of the West, I could
scarcely believe I was still in London.
Long, mean, monotonous streets, running off to right and left, miles on
miles of them without form or feature, or any trace of nature except the
blue strips of sky overhead.
Such multitudes of people, often badly dressed and generally with set
and anxious faces, hasting to and fro, hustling, elbowing, jostling each
other along, as if driven by some invisible power that was swinging an
unseen scourge.


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