We do not live very far from London; it is only about an hour's journey, so I went by the next train. I wondered very much why Alice had sent for me, and what she wanted to ask me.
When I arrived in London I took a cab to the address she had given me on the letter. The cabman drove for about a mile through a dirty and dismal part of the great city, and then he stopped before a high dismal house, in the midst of a row of high dismal houses, which was confronted, on the opposite side of the street, by another row of houses just as high and just as dismal.
I dismissed the cabman and rang the bell. The door was opened by an untidy servant, with no cap or collar on, but wearing a very dirty, ragged apron. She showed me into a room the windows of which looked out into the narrow street, and asked me to sit down whilst she went to tell "the folks upstairs" that I had come.
The room was shabbily furnished, and smelt strongly of tobacco, and the atmosphere was close and stifling, as if the windows had not been opened for a long time.
Was it possible that Claude and Alice were living here, or had I made a mistake in the address? I referred to the letter in my pocket, and found I was correct as to the name of the street and the number of the house, and, certainly, the girl who had admitted me had said that Mrs. Ellis lived there.
But oh, how forlorn and dreary everything looked! I was quite glad when a slipshod footstep was heard on the stairs, and a sullen-looking girl, of about fourteen years old, came in, and asked me to come upstairs to "missus." She took me into a bedroom at the very top of that high house, and there, lying in bed and looking fearfully ill, I found Claude's wife, Alice.
She welcomed me very warmly, and thanked me, again and again, for coming so soon; but I could hardly hear what she said, for her baby, who was lying on the bed beside her, was crying so loudly, and her every effort to pacify him was in vain.
"Jane, you can take baby into the next room," she said to the girl; "he is so fretful! Does not he look ill?" she added, turning to me.
I took the child in my arms; he was dreadfully thin, and had a careworn, wasted face, more like that of an old man than of a baby three months old.
"Poor little fellow!" I said.