Christina

by L. G. Moberly

"J. LAYTON."

With a final chuckle, the young man put both letters into an envelope, and having stamped it, went whistling from the house, and through the park to the village, to post the missive himself at the little village post office.

"Quiet and cultivated gentleman of good family and means, is anxious to meet a young lady of good birth who needs a home, etc., etc., etc.," he murmured as he walked slowly back to the Castle through the dripping November mist. "Oh! what sport—what utterly ripping sport!"

CHAPTER II.

"MUMMY'S BABA—DAT'S ALL."

In the great Free Library of a crowded London district, the gas burnt dimly; the yellow fog of a November morning crept even into the big room, and the few readers shivered a little in its cold clamminess. At this early hour, for the building had only just opened its doors on a Monday morning, merely a scattered number of men and women were to be seen in the place, and those who were there clustered round the advertisement columns of the newspapers. Both men and women alike were a sorry-looking crew, and the sad words "out of work," were stamped upon them all. Their clothing bore the marks of much wear and tear; their faces were worn, and in the eyes of each of them was that strained expression, that rises from much looking for that which never comes. Old and young men were there, searching the long columns of the papers for work that might suit their pressing needs; old and young women were there, too—women whose faces gave eloquent testimony to their hard fight with fortune—whose eyes glanced hungrily along the printed lines, whose hands tremblingly wrote down this or that address, which might by some merciful chance give them, if not exactly what they wanted, at any rate that which would ensure their earning a pittance, however scanty. Almost every member of the forlorn group eyed every other member suspiciously, with furtive glances, that seemed to say: "If you are lucky enough to get a job out of those columns, then I shall fail to get one. We are cutting each other's throats here. Your success is my failure." And as each one finished jotting down the addresses that were likely to be of use, he or she moved silently away from the library, speaking no word to the rest—like cowering animals who, having received a bone, or the promise of a bone, slink away from their fellows, fearful lest even the small thing they have gained, should be snatched from them.

The greater number amongst the searchers for work, consisted of those who, for want of a better title, may be described as belonging to the middle classes. They were neither the very poor—in the recognised acceptation of the words, though heaven knows they were poor enough—neither could they be classed amongst artisans, or mechanics. Their appearance would lead an onlooker to suppose that the men were accustomed to office work of some description, and that the women were governesses, companions, or perhaps lady housekeepers—all respectable, all possessing certain ideals of life and propriety, all struggling to maintain the degree of gentility, which would keep them above the high-water mark of degradation. A girl who stood a little apart from the rest, looked round the dimly-lit room with pitiful eyes, and a shudder ran through her slight frame, as she watched the faces and forms of these women who were no longer young, but who were yet still engaged in this hand-to-hand fight with destitution. The girl was young; it was impossible to suppose that more than twenty years had gone over her head, though the deep shadows under her eyes, and the lines of anxiety, about her mouth, might have made a casual observer regard her as an older woman. Like the rest of her sex who scanned the advertisement columns, she was dressed in clothes which had plainly seen better days—much better days. But, whereas some of the other women had already begun to drift into untidiness, and into the slovenly ways which mark the first step along a downward road, this girl was exquisitely neat from head to foot. Her hat, in spite of its age, was well brushed; her threadbare coat and skirt were tidy, and showed no traces of dirt or grease; her gloves, though they were white at the tips, had no holes; and there was no sign of neglect or disorder in the arrangement of the dark hair, that showed in soft, dusky curls below her hat.

"Poor things! Oh! poor things!" was her thought, as she looked at the sad string of humanity filing its slow way to the door. "Some of them have been every day for weeks, and they are getting older every day. And the older one gets, the harder it is to find work. Some day I shall be like that, old, and tired, and worn out; and then—work will be more difficult to get than it is now—and I can't get it—even now—when I am young."

The thoughts that had begun in sheer pity for those other battlers with the waves of this troublesome world, ended in a shuddering realisation of her own position; and not only of her position for the moment, but of the future that stretched inimitably before her across the years. She, Christina Moore, was only twenty, and in all human probability another sixty years of life might be hers, for she dimly remembered hearing her mother say that both she and her husband belonged to long-lived families. That they two had been cut off in the prime of life by a virulent epidemic of typhoid fever that swept the village like a plague, did not alter the fact that they came of races famous for octogenarians; and Christina, the last of two long lines of ancestors, shivered anew at the thought of the weary, weary years of struggle that might still lie before her. It was seldom that she was assailed by such depressing reflections; her youth had a way, as youth has, of asserting itself, and rebounding from its own despair; and there was an abundance of pluck behind those queer, green eyes of hers, and no lack of resolution in her small square chin. But the fog outside, the chilly atmosphere of the big library, whose fires were barely alight, and the sight of the same unemployed men and women who for weeks past had, as it were, dogged her footsteps, all combined this morning, to send Christina's spirits down to zero. Matters had not been improved by the calculations over which she had busied herself before leaving her lodgings an hour earlier. Whilst eating her dry bread, and drinking tea without milk, because both milk and butter were luxuries she no longer dared to give herself, she had written out her pitiful accounts upon a half-sheet of paper; and the result of the reckoning had given her a terrible feeling of desperation. For two years since her parents' death, she had occupied the post of nursery governess in the family of a Mrs. Donaldson, to whom her mother had once shown some trifling kindness. But three months earlier these people had left England for Canada, and no longer required her services—and Christina, untrained to any profession, with a few pounds in hand, and with nothing but a strong personality, and an innate love for little children, to offer as her stock in trade, found herself amongst the hundreds of other unemployed—just a waif in a great city!