Lady John. What we must make for, first, is the cheap and humanely conducted lodging-house.
Mrs. H. There are several of those already, but poor St. Pilgrim's——
Miss L. There are none for the poorest women.
Lady John. No, even the excellent Soper was for multiplying Rowton Houses. You can never get men to realise—you can't always get women——
Miss L. It's the work least able to wait.
Mrs. H. I don't agree with you, and I happen to have spent a great deal of my life in works of charity.
Miss L. Ah, then you'll be interested in the girl I saw dying in a Tramp Ward a little while ago. Glad her cough was worse—only she mustn't die before her father. Two reasons. Nobody but her to keep the old man out of the workhouse—and "father is so proud." If she died first, he would starve; worst of all he might hear what had happened up in London to his girl.
Mrs. H. She didn't say, I suppose, how she happened to fall so low.
Miss L. Yes, she had been in service. She lost the train back one Sunday night and was too terrified of her employer to dare ring him up after hours. The wrong person found her crying on the platform.
Mrs. H. She should have gone to one of the Friendly Societies.