your arm in that brown paper parcel laughed a leg of mutton i have just been to the stores you mean to say you buy legs of mutton at the stores and carry them home supposing you met some one if we were to � not very likely a night like this i have a small house in hill i take the at the i shall be very glad if you will come with me so will the i forgot to ask about her how is she very well come and see for yourself come and dine with us to morrow i can t give you one of your dinners but if leg of mutton will suit all i can say is that i shall be very happy i ll come whenever you like can you come to morrow yes we might go to the theatre afterwards we might be at my place at half past six that will give us plenty of time what a queer fish he is thought frank as he walked down street looking at the women can t come and dine with me because he has two or three to spring days write must have all his books out to make � what a clerk for the government � an ideal clerk what a genius for red frank of course drove all the way to hill was standing on the steps of the little house and he commented on his friend s as he welcomed him you might have come here for third class you paid that three shillings and you took i don t mind half an hour longer now don t make a mess do wipe your feet we don t keep a servant and it gives the a lot of trouble cleaning up not a book nor a picture nor a single flower and every worn carpet suggested the bare necessaries of life there was the drawing room kept for show never entered barren and blank there was the room � a little more alive � where smoked his pipe and kept his accounts but there the three or four seemed to speak of the dry bread like days that wore themselves away life there was too obviously dry and bare and mean had frank s mind been philosophic and deep seeing he would have mused on the admirable patience of the woman who lived here seeing no one making entire sacrifice of her life he would have contrasted the nay the meanness of this unknown house with the and of the house one life wasting in darkness and poverty another burning out in light and riches truths float on the surface of this little pool of life and so are they that they appear for a moment new and original but further than a l spring days regret that there were no flowers in the window and a sense of the horrible when his eyes fell on a piece of scenery his thoughts did not wander they soon were fixed and absorbed in the consideration of the happiness that had attained by doing the right thing by the woman he was hers she was his dreams of things the of husband and wife are the essence of the being of some men and women and are to them a delight frank was such a one he had brought a doll and the child came and sat on his knees and put her arms round his neck he kissed the long face hollow eyed and the beautiful gold that the shoulders they went to the theatre in a frank carried and he called indignantly to the crowd not to press him did they not see that he was carrying a child he did not think that his friends might recognise him nor would he have felt any shame had he caught sight of some face in the he knew he would not have put aside nor would he have pretended that he was not with the pale worn dressed woman by his side he was wholly filled with his friends their interests and concerns so complete was the of himself that baker did not snatch a fugitive thought from them and it was not until he sat smoking with in the back parlour that he said � i wonder what has become of her she was a nice girl you mean baker you lost sight of her all of a sudden didn t you do you think she went off to live with some one spring days no i don t think she was a girl who would do that by jove she was a pretty girl once i took her up the river up to we had such a jolly day in the woods and on the water � amid the water lilies and or the shade of the i wonder you never go up the river i have no time besides i hate the water i never go on the water if i can help it i am too nervous how odd oh we had a jolly day but i never understood how it was you lost sight of her you said in your letter that she had left the bar but she must have gone somewhere i am sure you didn t make sufficient inquiries you are too impatient i did all i could one girl told me that a lot of them � among the number � had suddenly been transferred to liverpool street that was true for i saw at liverpool street several girls i had known previously at the gaiety those poor bar girls how pitiful they look all over london they stand behind their bars breathing for hours tobacco smoke of and beer listening to abominable jokes the subjects of hideous and then the little comedy the to appear as virtuous young ladies � young ladies of the bar it is very pitiful it is 