1.

　　There are streets in London into which the sun seems never topenetrate. Some of these are in fashionable quarters, and it is to besupposed that their inhabitants find an address which looks well onnote-paper a sufficient compensation for the gloom that goes with it.

　　The majority, however, are in the mean neighborhoods of the greatrailway termini, and appear to offer no compensation whatever. Theyare lean, furtive streets, gray as the January sky with a sort ofarrested decay. They smell of cabbage and are much prowled over byvagrom cats. At night they are empty and dark, and a stillness broodson them, broken only by the cracked tingle of an occasional pianoplaying one of the easier hymns, a form of music to which thedwellers in the dingy houses are greatly addicted. By day theyachieve a certain animation through the intermittent appearance ofwomen in aprons, who shake rugs out of the front doors or, emergingfrom areas, go down to the public-house on the corner with jugs tofetch the supper-beer. In almost every ground-floor window there is acard announcing that furnished lodgings may be had within. You willfind these streets by the score if you leave the main thoroughfaresand take a short cut on your way to Euston, to Paddington, or toWaterloo. But the dingiest and deadliest and most depressing lieround about Victoria. And Daubeny Street, Pimlico, is one of theworst of them all.

　　On the afternoon following the events recorded, a girl was dressingin the ground-floor room of Number Nine, Daubeny Street. A traybearing the remains of a late breakfast stood on the rickety tablebeside a bowl of wax flowers. From beneath the table peered the greencover of a copy of _Variety_. A gray parrot in a cage by the windowcracked seed and looked out into the room with a satirical eye. Hehad seen all this so many times before,--Nelly Bryant arrayingherself in her smartest clothes to go out and besiege agents in theiroffices off the Strand. It happened every day. In an hour or two shewould come back as usual, say "Oh, Gee!" in a tired sort of voice,and then Bill the parrot's day proper would begin. He was a bird wholiked the sound of his own voice, and he never got the chance of areally sustained conversation till Nelly returned in the evening.

　　"Who cares?" said Bill, and cracked another seed.

　　If rooms are an indication of the characters of their occupants,Nelly Bryant came well out of the test of her surroundings. Nothingcan make a London furnished room much less horrible than it intendsto be, but Nelly had done her best. The furniture, what there was ofit, was of that lodging-house kind which resembles nothing else inthe world. But a few little touches here and there, a fewinstinctively tasteful alterations in the general scheme of things,had given the room almost a cosy air. Later on, with the gas lit, itwould achieve something approaching homeiness. Nelly, like manyanother nomad, had taught herself to accomplish a good deal with poormaterial. On the road in America, she had sometimes made even abedroom in a small hotel tolerably comfortable, than which there isno greater achievement. Oddly, considering her life, she had a geniusfor domesticity.